“We’ve been rethinking our conclusions a bit. That whole alien portal thing may not be correct.”
She ground her cigarette into the desktop again. “I see.” Royal blood or not, he and Amanda had just shifted from the asset to liability side of the ledger. “And have you perchance moved on to a new theory?”
“As a matter of fact, we have. But we’ve hit a bit of a dead end. We need help from your Vatican expert. We need access to the Vatican archives.”
“Very well. Tell me where you are and we’ll come by and have a nice chat. I’m certain he’d be pleased to help you. Ultimately we’re all working toward an identical goal: We want to learn the truth.” She inhaled, covered the receiver to hide her cough. Truth was whatever the writers of history—the architects of coups and wars and, in this case, cover-ups—decided it would be.
He chuckled. “I’m afraid that after our last visit, we’re not that comfortable with Reichmann and his posse.” He paused. “We’ll meet you on the Longfellow Bridge in Boston. Just you and Father Balducci. No goons.”
That was fine. At close range she could fire a gun as well as anyone. And the consequences were irrelevant—as an old woman, her life was winding down anyway; she would gladly sacrifice a few years to save Prince Henry and Sir James. “Why the Longfellow Bridge?”
“Wait, I’m not finished with the conditions of our meeting. If we don’t return, our story goes public.”
Thorne’s threat of the story being released to the media if he were found dead had kept her from killing them at America’s Stonehenge. But now that they had abandoned their alien portal theory there was no benefit in keeping them alive—the story would come out whether she killed them or not. In fact, the story was one of those outlandish conspiracy theories that required a strong, articulate champion. With Cam and Amanda dead—not to mention Forsberg and the Monsignor—who would be bold enough, stupid enough, to grab the reins of this runaway stallion? The only likely candidate, ironically, would be the Consortium itself. Babinaux would not be pleased to learn of her involvement in the murders and cover-up but he would know enough to spin the story, to paint Prince Henry as a champion of Christianity rather than an enemy of the Pope. He would know which secrets to reveal and which to conceal. In retrospect, she may have played it too cute back at America’s Stonehenge. Perhaps she should have just bumped them off and allowed Babinaux to finesse the story and clean up the mess.
She’d been given a second chance. “Again, why the Longfellow Bridge?”
“I’ll explain it when we get there.”
He was bluffing. “That’s not good enough, Mr. Thorne. After your alien theory, you do not have a lot of credibility in my book.”
“Okay,” he sighed. “This is what we’ve found. First, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the poet for whom the bridge is named, is the grandson of Peleg Wadsworth. Peleg was a leading Freemason in the state of Maine. In fact, he settled a new town and named it Hiram. In Masonic lore, Hiram is--”
“I know full well who Hiram is, Mr. Thorne.” He and the silly girl continued to insult her. Hiram Abiff, chief architect during the construction of King Solomon’s Temple, was a paramount figure in Masonic tradition. She took a deep draw on her cigarette and exhaled slowly. “Continue.”
“Well, Peleg’s Masonic ties are the first link between Longfellow and Prince Henry.”
“A rather tenuous connection. Many men other than Longfellow had Masonic grandparents at that time.”
“Agreed. But did you also know Longfellow wrote a poem about the Newport Tower?”
“Something about armor, if I recall correctly.”
“Yes. So that’s the second connection. The third connection is the bridge itself. Prows of Viking ships are carved onto each of the four main bridge stanchions.”
“Viking ships? Why?”
“Exactly our point. No Vikings came to Boston. Unless, of course, you count Prince Henry.”
“Continue.”
“The fourth connection is a direct link between Judge Samuel Sewall, a Puritan judge, and Longfellow.” Thorne briefly explained Sewall’s ties to the Bourne Stone and his visits both to Noman’s Land and Stonehenge in England. “We think Sewall was somehow involved in keeping the Prince Henry secrets.” Interesting. She had never heard of a Judge Sewall connection. Thorne continued. “Longfellow’s great-grandmother was Sewall’s sister.”
Beatrice attempted to hide her surprise. Family links—secrets passed down through the generations—were of crucial importance in the Prince Henry history. Perhaps the young lawyer was on to something. He seemed to have an uncanny ability to ferret out random pieces of information and piece them together. “Why must we meet on the bridge itself?”
“Because we found some carvings we think are important. They’re faint but they’re clearly visible. If you know where to look.”
As if she might attempt to locate the carvings herself. Why would she? He could save her the time while also giving her the chance finally to eliminate them. “How old is the bridge? The carvings can’t be more than a century or two in age.” She didn’t want to appear over-eager.
“The bridge was built in 1906. But that doesn’t mean the stones used to build it aren’t centuries older.”
“And you believe Father Balducci can help translate these carvings?”
“I don’t know. We don’t even know what they are. We’ve had a few people take a look and nobody can figure them out. They look like runes but not exactly. He’s supposed to be the expert in all this stuff, right?”
“Yes. He is the Vatican expert on all things Templar.” Time to reel him in. “The Templars utilized many codes that are unknown to all but a handful of Vatican scholars. The Vatican, you see, took custody of all Templar records in 1307. If it is a Templar code of some sort, Father Balducci will decipher it.”
“Okay then. Meet us at eight o’clock tomorrow morning, on the bridge. Wait for us at the up-stream stanchion on the Boston side of the river.”
* * *
[Sunday]
Beatrice Yarborough exited the taxi, dug in her purse for the exact fare and stepped to the curb on Charles Street, at the foot of Boston’s Beacon Hill. The street was mostly empty on this Sunday morning. She tapped her foot impatiently, glanced at a window display of trinkets and attic junk that in America passed as antiquities. A pair of joggers ran by, more Americans fixated on buffing their bodies even as their brains shriveled from a nationwide dearth of intellectual curiosity and culture. Did no one in this country appreciate classical music or the arts or even fine conversation? She missed the Knight but she did not miss the States. When her work here was complete she would waste not a moment before boarding a plane to London.
That was, of course, assuming things went according to plan on the bridge. She patted the revolver in the breast pocket of her gray blazer. Cameron Thorne and Amanda Spencer would not leave the Longfellow bridge alive.
A black Cadillac pulled alongside the curb; a driver stepped out and opened the back door for Father Balducci. A whiff of expensive cologne wafted over Beatrice as the priest, well-dressed again in a herringbone blazer, climbed out of the car. She waited for him to apologize for being late; when he did not, she took a deep breath and addressed him as politely as she could. Just because his Italian manners were lacking did not mean hers should be as well. “Good morning, Father. Please follow me.”
She led the angular scholar down Charles Street two blocks to a traffic rotary. They climbed a concrete stairway to the Longfellow Bridge, resting halfway to allow the Vatican emissary to dab his face with a handkerchief. They had discussed their plan last night by telephone but she reviewed it with him again once they reached the bridge itself. “Reichmann and his men will be in automobiles, circling back and forth across the bridge,” she said. “Our goal is to obtain as much information from them as we can before we … abduct them. We need to determine if they have spoken to the press yet. And, of course, we want to view these mysterious carvings
.”
Balducci stopped, his hands folded neatly in front of his genitals. “As you know, I take my orders only from my superiors at the Holy See.” His dark, mousse-styled hair remained frozen in place even as the wind whipped down the river. “Fortunately, on this occasion, my orders and your instructions are in accord. We must not allow them to leave the bridge.”
* * *
Cam and Amanda stood on the Cambridge side of the Longfellow Bridge, a cool wind powering a lone sailboat as it darted across the river. Though the temperature was in the fifties, they both wore only biking shorts, tank tops and flip-flops. Cam pulled his fanny pack tight around his waist.
His TracFone rang. “I see them,” Brandon reported. “An older woman and a tall guy in a blazer. They’re on the bridge on the Boston side. Upriver.”
“They alone?” Cam peered across the river at the Massachusetts General Hospital complex. Brandon sat somewhere at a window on an upper floor, a pair of binoculars trained on the bridge and river below.
“Yup. Nobody else with them. A couple of female joggers coming from the Cambridge side but I think they’re legit.”
“Any sign of Reichmann?”
“Oh yeah. I’ve seen four sedans, all black, circling back and forth across the bridge for the past half-hour.”
“Black sedans again?” Amanda shook her head. “Don’t they have any imagination?”
He smiled, no longer surprised by her irreverence but still amused by it. “What about Poulos?”
“I’m ready,” the cop answered. “Brandon has me on a three-way call. I’m motoring upriver right now, just passing that condo complex in Cambridge that looks like a pyramid. You should be able to see me.” Cam spotted the unmarked State Police pleasure boat, captained by a female officer in civilian clothes. “You should assume that once you start walking, the guys in the sedans will get out and move in on foot. They’ll pinch you in the middle.”
Cam wasn’t sure he wanted to face Reichmann and his men again. Especially Salazar. They would be playing for keeps this time, no staged escape. That didn’t give him and Amanda much time. He checked his watch. 7:51. “Okay. We’re going to head across.”
Poulos stopped him. “Check your transmitters first.”
He shifted uncomfortably. “Actually, we took them off.” Poulos’ State Police buddies had fitted them each with small transmitters taped to their chests.
“You did what?”
“Too risky. You could see them every time the wind blew our shirts.” Cam wasn’t willing to assume Balducci wouldn’t try to sneak a peek inside Amanda’s blouse.
“Damn it, Cam. You can’t go changing things last minute,” Poulos said.
“Look, don’t blame me for the wind. Anyway, I put one of the transmitters in my fanny pack. You should be able to hear everything still.”
They began to walk along the 6-foot wide sidewalk on the upriver side of the bridge; only a green, wrought-iron pedestrian railing stood, chest-high, between them and a thirty-foot fall to the river below. Four stone obelisks—the so-called salt and pepper shakers that made the bridge famous—rose in a square-like pattern around the center of the bridge.
Within seconds they heard the rumble of a Red Line transit train approaching from the Cambridge side. The train rumbled past on the median portion of the bridge using tracks that divided the northbound and southbound lanes of traffic. Cam checked his watch again. 7:54. The trains ran at 20-minute intervals, each way, though Bostonians knew better than to set their watches by them.
Brandon’s muffled voice echoed from inside Cam’s fanny pack. “Yarborough and Balducci are at the first obelisk. They’re still alone.”
He took Amanda’s hand and smiled. “Ready?”
“Quite.”
* * *
Beatrice patted the revolver one last time for reassurance, forcing a smile as the two lovebirds sauntered toward her, barely dressed. They’d probably just rolled out of bed, the trollop no doubt distracting Thorne from the important work at hand.
“Now, Mr. Thorne, where is this carving of yours? Let’s get on with it. I don’t see anything other than graffiti.” They met on a granite walkway that rimmed one of the salt-shaker obelisks, the walkway protruding over the river on the up-current, Boston side.
Amanda crossed her arms in front of her chest. “You can’t believe we’d instruct you to meet us at the very spot of the carvings, can you?”
Feeling the cold presence of the revolver in the pocket of her jacket, Beatrice ignored the girl. “Mr. Thorne?”
He nodded. “Follow me.” He began walking back toward the center of the bridge span. Turning casually to Father Balducci, he spoke. “You know, there’s another reason I wanted to bring you out here. I wanted to get your opinion on something.”
Aha. So there was more to this than merely some carvings.
* * *
Cam chose his words carefully as the scholar loped along, his hands in his jacket pockets. Cam would only get one chance to read Balducci’s face, to sense his reaction. Here, protected by trained operatives and with Cam at his mercy, Balducci would be candid, unguarded, his response an honest one. Which was why Cam was willing to risk the meeting on the bridge. The Vatican scholar’s reaction would tell him whether he and Amanda had stumbled upon a hidden, shadow version of history that would change the way the Western world viewed itself.
He turned to face Balducci. He sensed he was about to learn something monumental, something that would make all the other earth-shaking discoveries of the past week seem like minor tremors. Amanda must have sensed it also; she reached over, took his hand and squeezed it tightly. Even Yarborough leaned closer to listen.
He took a deep breath. “The Church probably would have collapsed, wouldn’t it?”
The scholar leaned against the ornate, green-iron pedestrian railing, adopting a casual pose. “You are a fool, Mr. Thorne, with foolish conclusions. The Church will never collapse.”
Good. A witness that attacked was protecting something—usually a secret. “Prince Henry was going to start a whole new religion in America. A New Jerusalem. The Church might not have survived.”
Balducci’s patted his hair. “History is replete with misguided splinter groups breaking away from the Church. Martin Luther, for example.” He sneered. “You do know who that is, don’t you Thorne? Not Martin Luther King, but Martin Luther.”
Cam ignored the question. After a few seconds Balducci continued, now rubbing the side of his mouth with his hand. “The Church has always survived. It always will.” The self-touching told Cam the scholar was lying. Which meant it was true—Prince Henry wasn’t just fleeing the Church, he was planning to oppose it. To create a New Jerusalem.
“But Prince Henry was not just some random village monk like Martin Luther,” Cam countered. “He was religious royalty, the clan leader of a family that carried the blood of Jesus in its veins. He was Jesus’ heir. How could the Pope compete with that?”
The priest straightened his back and rested his hands on his hips in an effort to appear authoritative. “Even if such an outlandish claim were true, there would have been hundreds of others so-called descendants of Jesus and the Magdalene at that time as well. Sinclair was only one man.”
“You’re wrong. And I think you know it. The Sinclair clan was the main branch of the Jesus bloodline tree. And the other branches of that tree, the other Merovingian dynasty families, fully supported him. The bloodline families had been fighting the Church for centuries, beginning back when Bernard de Clairvaux first convinced the Pope to embrace the Templars as the military wing of the Church. You know as well as I do that the Templars and the bloodline families were one and the same. Both were fighting to bring the Sacred Feminine back into Christianity, fighting to reestablish the duality of the godhead. And both were willing to undermine the Church if necessary to do so.”
The scholar began to stammer a response but nothing coherent escaped his mouth. Finally he formed a tepid reply. “You have
no proof of this.” Balducci squeezed his bottom lip between his thumb and forefinger. Someday Cam would like to play high-stakes poker with him.
“We’re here on this bridge, aren’t we? Why else would you be here? What other true teachings of Jesus could the Rex Deus families be guarding all these centuries? And even if I don’t have proof, Prince Henry sure did. He had a genealogy, records that showed the Sinclair and other Templar families carried the blood of Jesus in their veins. Not only that, he had documents—lost gospels—that showed the entire Church was built on lies and that the so-called pagan ways were the true path of Christ. So I’ll ask you again: Do you think the Church could have survived the Jesus bloodline families calling for Christians to join them in rejecting the Church and forming a New Jerusalem? One to be led by the heir to Jesus?”
Balducci crossed his arms in front of his chest and angled his body away as Cam pushed on. “Prince Henry was going to bring down the Church. Not because he wanted power but because he was a believer in the true teachings of Christ, not the bastardized version of Christianity the Church had fabricated. Maybe the Plague or a shipwreck or simply old age stopped him. But I’m inclined to think the Church somehow found out about his plan and assassinated him. Not that I blame them—if his message had gotten out, the Church would have fallen. How could the Pope have prevented it? Spiritually, Prince Henry was a human Holy Grail, the carrier of Christ’s blood. And strategically, he was protected by the Atlantic Ocean.”
The cleric’s normally olive complexion had turned completely pallid and lifeless, like the concrete sidewalk below them. Cam himself felt a bit unsteady. Balducci’s reaction confirmed the unfathomable: Prince Henry Sinclair, with the support of the other Jesus bloodline families, had come to America to establish a New Jerusalem based on pagan beliefs and rituals. A religion in direct opposition to the Church, with ancient texts to support its claims for legitimacy.
It was impossible. Yet it was at the same time very possible.
Yarborough’s voice cut through the wind on the bridge. “That is quite enough, Mr. Thorne.”
Cabal of The Westford Knight: Templars at the Newport Tower (Book #1 in the Templars in America Series) Page 34
