The Solomon Key

by Shawn Hopkins

“Throw it on the floor.”

  Waiting as long as he dared, Scott reached into his black jacket and pulled out the book, tossing it on the floor.

  “Did you read the whole thing?” Mayhew asked.

  “No.”

  “You didn’t get to the end? You missed the best part, how it all ties together!” He noticed Scott’s confusion. “I read it while you were sleeping. I was going to take it, but I had to give you some kind of clue as to what was going on. What fun would it be if you didn’t know the magnitude of the game, what was at stake? There’d be no satisfaction in it for me if you died completely clueless. Without knowing that you were used.”

  Scott almost shot him right then, but for some reason felt he needed to hear the rest of what the lunatic had to say. People like this took pleasure in explaining their devious ways, got a rush out of sharing the knowledge. If they couldn’t reveal their work, then the work itself was almost pointless from an egotistical perspective. They needed to know that their victim’s knew.

  Mayhew bent over and picked up the book, stuck it inside his jacket. “The secret symbols all over our former nation’s capital, the esoteric agenda spelled out in stone, Sirius portrayed by the five-pointed pentalpha, the Blazing Star the light shining behind the capstone on the dollar bill…” He paused, waving his hands as if to conjure up something that might spark an acknowledgement from Scott.

  Scott shook his head, trying to keep him talking.

  Mayhew sighed. “Anyway, you can drop your gun, too.”

  Scott dropped the M4, and it bounced at his feet. Unfortunately, it didn’t go off and hit Mayhew in the mouth.

  “Do you know who Manly P. Hall was? Masonry’s greatest philosopher!” He was preaching now.

  “You’re insane,” Scott muttered.

  “How would you know?” Then he raised the pistol and fired it into the air, the explosion from the Desert Eagle banging throughout the offices, the muzzle flash blinding even in the artificial light. The empty casing rattled on the floor. “Now, are we paying attention yet?” He waved the gun toward his left. “Go. Sit.”

  Scott obeyed, taking a seat at a computer console, hoping Mayhew kept his act up. The Desert Eagle’s clip only held seven rounds, not that it would take more than one to blow his head apart like a watermelon, but it was the report of the weapon that pleased him. The more Mayhew fired that monster, the more fatigued his arm would become.

  “Put your hands on your knees where I can see them,” Mayhew ordered.

  Scott complied, never releasing his eyes from Mayhew’s.

  “So anyway, Hall founded the Philosophical Research Society in California as a sort of attempt to bring back the Alexandrian Library. His research, however, was mostly dedicated to discovering America’s true purpose…”

  “Really?”

  Mayhew ignored the interruption. “He became convinced that America had a secret destiny that dated all the way back to the ancient world. FDR also believed America had a date with destiny. A Russian mystic and Rosicrucian,” he took a bow, “named Nicholas Roerich… you heard of him? Nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize three times, member of the theosophical society? Anyway, he was associated with Hall, said to be the spiritual mentor of Henry Wallace, FDR’s vice-president. Ahhh…” He feigned an epiphany. “And it was his influence that convinced FDR to put the reverse of the seal on the back of the dollar bill with the words, ‘New Order of the Ages.’ How bout that? Ten to one FDR believed his New Deal was the beginning of the New Order.”

  “Is this going somewhere, because I have to pee.” He started tapping his foot.

  “World democracy, my friend, was one of the secrets handed down through Freemasonry, the secret dream of the philosophers. It’s the main reason for all the wars throughout the last century.” He put his head up, took in a long breath of air through his nose. “Can you smell it? Smells so good, so promising. The utopian dream, a fair world. A world court sowing forth justice, a world police keeping the peace, no one in need of anything. For three thousand years, our secret societies have been working to bring this about.”

  “What are you doing here?” Scott snapped, his patience teetering.

  Mayhew laughed. “Didn’t the scientist explain it to you?”

  “Transhumanism? That’s your big agenda? Playing God?”

  “No. Becoming God. You remember the part in Genesis where Lucifer tells Eve that if she eats of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil her eyes will be opened, and she’ll be like God?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, that illumination did take place in man, and he’s been writing about it ever since. The Greeks, Persians, Babylonians… you see it all throughout history, even today. Especially today.”

  “The New Age garbage everyone’s selling?”

  “Oh, it’s not garbage. It’s power. It’s everything God wanted to keep for Himself.” He looked in the general direction of the lab. “The philosophers knew that a perfect society could only come through perfected men. That’s what we’re doing here.”

  “Nazis.”

  He frowned. “We’re on the verge of accomplishing something Hitler barely even scratched the surface of.”

  “You’re going to burn in hell, you know that?”

  “Why Mr. Scott, you don’t believe in hell.”

  “You’re changing my mind.”

  Mayhew smiled again. “But you know what was really fun? Wrapping the cross with the rose. Who knew that the rose would actually replace the ideology of the cross? All we had to do was print ‘In God We Trust’ on money, and suddenly the rest of what was proclaimed on those bills didn’t matter to the faithful. We convinced them that the nation was first theirs, founded, of course, by Christian principles and godly men,” he chuckled, “not that they would ever read the Founders’ writings for themselves. Anyway, we were able to turn them into politicians promoting our democracy as if it were the Gospel itself. In fighting for America, they paved the road to the NAU.”

  Scott remembered Jack saying the same thing.

  Mayhew waved the gun some more, squinting at another thought. “Are you familiar with the numerology of the number thirteen? What it means to Kabbalah, Pythagoras, and even the Bible? Man’s ability to go beyond the zodiac? ‘Too low they build who build beneath the stars.’ That’s actually from a wall in the Library of Congress. Oh, here’s another one, ‘The true shekinah is man.’” He laughed.

  “So what?”

  “Well, the number thirteen was all over the dollar! Stripes, stars in the hexagram, levels of the pyramid… it’s also how many colonies America had when she rebelled against England…”

  “Stretching it a bit, aren’t we?”

  He smiled. “Biblical numerology associates the number thirteen with apostasy, rebellion, and revolution.”

  Scott smirked, shook his head.

  “Oh!” Mayhew shouted. “Are you the one trained in the esoteric arts, the mystery religions and their ancient practices? No, I am! Don’t you know that Congress even passed HR 33 to honor Freemasonry’s role in establishing this country? So don’t laugh at these things, you ignorant—”

  “I have an idea,” Scott dryly stated over the expletive. “Why don’t you let me finish reading the book myself so that you can shut the hell up?”

  Mayhew stared at him for a long moment, and when he spoke again, his voice was as level as a frozen pond. “The scientist didn’t recognize your wife, did he?”

  Scott didn’t answer.

  “Maybe that’s because she was never here. Maybe Malachi and his Mossad friends lied to you to get you to come along. What is it they said they were after? The scientist? Information about the biological agent?” He shook his head. “They don’t care about any of that. They only care about the ring. That’s why they came here. For Melissa Strauss.”

  Scott had figured as much, though why they wanted him to go along was still a mystery to him.

  “But that’s not all they came for. They came for informati
on concerning our planned deception. The role the Ark of the Covenant is going to play in it.”

  “I wish you would just shoot me.”

  Again, Mayhew shrugged off the comment. “I heard you talking about Roswell with Isaiah.”

  “The priest mentioned it.”

  “He would. New Mexico, 1947, first week of July.” He began pacing, his gun arm now bent at the elbow, getting tired. “A local New Mexico rancher discovers a huge amount of unusual debris while checking on his sheep after a night of intense thunderstorms. Some of the debris appears to have strange physical properties, so he goes to get the Sheriff. The Sheriff contacts Roswell Army Air Field and, with help from the Sheriff’s deputies, they conduct an investigation. But the military shows up and seals off the area, closing it for days while they retrieve the wreckage. Whatever’s found is initially taken to Roswell Army Air Field, but from there it goes on B-29 and C-54 aircrafts to what was Wright Field.” He raised his eyebrows. “July 8th, 1947, the commander of the 509th Bomb Group, the only atomic bomb group in the world at that time and one of the most elite units in the world, issues an official press release stating that the wreckage of a crashed disk has been recovered. The statement makes headlines in over thirty US magazines that afternoon. But within hours, a second press release is issued from the commander of the Eighth Air Force at Fort Worth Army Air Field in Texas. Four hundred miles away. Evidently, the 509 at Roswell made a huge mistake and somehow mistook the wreckage of a weather balloon and its radar reflector for a crashed disk.

  “That incompetent commander who couldn’t tell the difference between a weather balloon and a flying saucer would later become a four-star general and Vice Chief of Staff of the US Air Force. Other witnesses, such as two brigadier generals, testify that the commander’s first report was correct. Even the Congressman from Albuquerque, in 1994, tells the press that the event in Roswell was being covered up by the government. The CIA and other agencies refuse to cooperate with investigators, claiming that the issue concerns national security. High-level inquiries reveal that UFOs appear to be involved at the highest levels of national security.”

  “Aliens?” And though his voice was tainted with ridicule, he remembered Isaiah’s warning.

  “Investigators were able to get copies of the 1947 Roswell Army Air Field yearbook, helping them track down witnesses. The intelligence officer of the 509 was the first to testify. He was one of the first two military officers to the actual site. He said that what they found wasn’t of this earth. Oh, and he later prepared the report on the Soviet’s first nuclear detonation, which went straight to Truman. In 1992, before his death, the colonel and chief of staff at Eighth in Fort Worth testified that he had received the call from Andrews Army Air Field in DC, commanding a cover-up to be devised.” He waved the gun in circular motions again. “The testimonies go on and on. A lieutenant colonel in Wright Field claimed in an interview taken in 1990 that the material brought in from Roswell was tested and considered alien to earth. The Sheriff who reported the wreckage was later threatened by the military. They told him that he and his family would be killed if any of them ever spoke of the incident again. The rancher who found the wreckage was sequestered by the military for almost a week and sworn to secrecy…”

  “So what?”

  “So what if this information, and much more like it, was all suddenly admitted?”

  “We’re being invaded?”

  “No, we’re being summoned. Or at least that’s what everyone will think. Contrary to the science fiction movies where Martians have come to destroy us, people will believe that they’ve come to save us. From ourselves. The Age of Aquarius bringing true enlightenment, revealing to us our own godhood.”

  “You’re serious?”

  “Let me ask you something, Matthew. What would you think if NASA all of a sudden proclaimed that they found an extra terrestrial substance with all of earth’s religious texts engraved across it? And what if that material could be proven to be directly related to the two rings of Solomon, to the Ark of the Covenant? Do you think that perhaps man’s concept of God might change a bit? An alien instrument being the radio through which the Jews talked to God?”

  “I think you’re crazy.”

  “It’s practically New Age doctrine, Matthew.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “One world religion, humanism, the Occult dream.”

  “One world religion? You think the Jews and the Muslims are going to go along with that?”

  “Seems to me that the ones that won’t are busy killing each other. Isn’t that convenient? Of course, according to the Bible, the Jews are going to fall in line with the whole program anyway, making a covenant with the Antichrist. The Christian church is pretty ecumenical these days too.” He shrugged, grinned.

  Scott clenched his teeth, knowing full well that he had about two minutes of self-control left. The Desert Eagle weighed four and a half pounds, and its sights were beginning to dip lower and lower in Mayhew’s hand. “What’s the point?”

  Mayhew looked confused. “The point? The point is power, control. The utopian dream isn’t for the masses, though they’ll support it believing that it is. What we’re doing here, the science, isn’t for the public’s benefit, it’s for ours. We will evolve, becoming the gods of this world. And once everyone’s chipped like good little World Patriots, they’ll be slaves to our will.” His lips spread away from his teeth. “We have to differentiate between terrorists and innocent civilians, eliminate fraud, bring in a cashless society, you know... to protect everyone. That is the point.” The huge pistol dropped another inch. “World democracy can’t become a reality with the present concept we have of God. The world has grown weary of religion, Matthew. After all, look at all the problems it’s caused in the world. Some of the most atrocious things have been orchestrated by religion.”

  “Religion used by people like you.”

  “Faith is a powerful thing. It is very useful when controlled. But it has no place in the coming Empire. Division will be a crime. Our space brothers will come to save us, to illuminate our way of thinking, to reveal the true concept of the divine. They will have the answers man has been searching for. Answers they will want to hear. How we are all of the same spirit, part of Gaia.”

  Scott changed the subject, seeing his opportunity approaching. “Did you kill Isaiah?”

  “Slit his throat. What does that have to do with anything?”

  Scott was counting on the heftiness of the Eagle to give him a fighting chance. Because of its size, weight, report, and blinding muzzle flash, the Desert Eagle was relatively clumsy for these types of situations and the reason it had become a relic among pistols. The Mark XIX that Mayhew was wielding had a ten inch barrel, as opposed to the six that other models had. If he fired it with his fatigued hand, the report would jack the barrel of the gun almost straight up into the air, pulling his whole arm up with it. He would then have to bring it all the way back down before getting off another shot. Scott just needed the first one to miss.

  “One more question,” Scott said. “How do I turn off the fence?”

  A look of astonishment swept over Mayhew’s face. “You think you’re going to make it out of here alive?”

  He shrugged. “Just supposing.”

  Mayhew sidestepped over to a console and brushed his fingers over the touchpad. He glanced down for a second, then looked back up to Scott. “There. It’s off.”

  Scott just stared at him.

  “But you know what? It doesn’t really matter whether it’s on or off, because I knew that the scientist was planning his little attempt at penitence. Why didn’t I stop it then, you ask? Because I knew it would bring the ring back. Oh yes, I know all about the little Christian commune. And, unfortunately, every last person within that community will be dead by tomorrow night. So, it doesn’t really matter if the prisoners here run away or not. They’ll be hunted down and shot all the same.”

  “You don’t think they’ll
get information from Melissa Strauss?”

  “She’s a vegetable. Besides, they’ll soon be dead, and I’ll have the ring.”

  “The ring that leads to the location of the Ark?” Scott was stalling now, waiting for Mayhew to transfer the pistol into his left hand.

  “Well, the ring is the last piece of the puzzle concocted by the Jews.”

  “Everyone’s always taking from the Jews.”

  Mayhew shrugged. “I didn’t judge them.”

  This was it, he could feel it.

  “You know, years ago we actually lost track of the other ring. What a mess that was. But you don’t even know about the other ring, do you? What it is? Well, never mind.” Mayhew brought his left hand toward his right.

  Scott tensed, only needing to confirm that he was in fact transferring it and not just getting a firmer grip with an added hand.

  The gun rotated sideways, the barrel shifting up to the left ever so slightly. But ever so slightly spread out over distance could prove to be the difference between life and death. Granted, there was only thirty feet separating them… but it was his only chance.

  The weight of the Eagle was now mostly in his left hand, his finger off the trigger and out of the trigger guard, and his right hand releasing the gun.

  Now!

  Scott pulled the silenced pistol out of the holster strapped to his thigh even as he moved forward up and off the chair. He threw himself sideways, diving for the cover of a desk.

  Mayhew quickly fired the Desert Eagle. Too quickly. He hadn’t had the time to aim, and the blast made his arm jump. By the time he was able to settle his aim, both hands steadying the pistol, Scott was out of sight.

  The shot tore half the table apart and blew out a chunk of the floor right beside Scott’s foot, but it was a miss. And now Scott had the advantage. He crawled across the floor, between rows of desks, heading for the far right wall. Once there, he sat with his back against it.

  A whistle echoed throughout the room. “Wow, that was fast.”

  Scott aimed the pistol at the farthest light and squeezed off a round. The bulb shattered, and the light went dark. He did it three more times, casting the room into more shadows.