The Adept Book 3 The Templar Treasure (5 page)

His son Lawrence arrived shortly after ten o’clock, white-faced and anxious, fetched from the airport by Superintendent Phipps and McLeod, the latter of whom remained at the hospital to wait for Adam. Nathan lingered until just before midnight, surrounded by his wife and sons and the friend he had called both to witness his passing and to carry out his final wishes. Adam watched over his old friend’s bedside like a knight keeping vigil at the altar, bowing his head when, at the end, a grieving Lawrence pulled a small prayer book from his pocket and began to read, beginning in Hebrew and then shifting to lightly accented English.

“Shema Yisrael, Adonai Elohenu, Adonai Echad.
Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One . . . Go, since the Lord sends thee; go, and the Lord will be with thee; the Lord God is with him, and he will ascend.”

As Lawrence intoned the exhortation twice more, his voice choking toward the end, Peter reached across and gently took the prayer book from him, continuing to read as Adam quietly slipped an arm around the shoulders of the younger son in comfort.

“May the Lord bless thee and keep thee,” Peter read. “May the Lord let His countenance shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee. May the Lord lift up His countenance upon thee, and give thee peace. At thy right hand is Michael, at thy left is Gabriel . . .”

Adam lifted his head at the recitation of the angelic names, for though the order was slightly different, the calling of the four archangels was common to his own tradition.

“Before thee is Uriel, and behind thee is Raphael, and above thy head is the divine presence of God,” Peter went on. “The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear Him, and He delivereth them. Be strong and of good courage; be not affrighted, neither be thou dismayed; for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest . . .”

When it was over, Adam spoke briefly with the attending physician, who had slipped in beside him during the final moments to watch helplessly as the life-support monitors faded, then joined McLeod in the corridor outside, to give the family a few minutes alone with their grief.

“He’s gone, then?” McLeod said, as Adam appeared, his tie loosened and his suit coat over one shoulder.

Adam nodded, his expression somber. “I don’t suppose one could wish for a gentler passing, under the circumstances. It was premature, though. He should have been allowed another decade or two, to see his grandchildren well grown and to carry on his research.”

“Well, we’ll see if we can’t find those responsible,” McLeod said. “Did you find out more about this stolen Seal?”

Adam glanced back at the glass-windowed double doors leading into the ICU.

“Yes, I did, and Nathan’s urgency apparently was well founded.” His expression was grave as he drew McLeod farther along the corridor from the nurses’ station, where they would not be overheard.

“I’m afraid Nathan was out of his depth,” he said quietly. “I wish he’d come to me sooner, but I doubt he really knew what he had. He had come to believe that the Seal guarded a treasure or a secret somehow connected with King Solomon and the Temple in Jerusalem. I’m left with the distinct impression that it kept something powerful and dangerous locked away—whether in Jerusalem or someplace closer to home, I couldn’t begin to guess. The Knights Templar figure in the story somehow, perhaps as guardians of the Seal. According to his son, Nathan has a document from the late fourteenth century that’s a promissory note for money borrowed against the Seal by someone called James Graeme. Nathan referred to him as Graeme of Templegrange.”

“Sounds like a Templar place name, all right,” McLeod rumbled. “But isn’t that a little late for Templars?”

“Aye, at least half a century late,” Adam agreed. “But don’t forget that the papal decree dissolving the Order was never publicly proclaimed in Scotland. Even in England, it was months before the authorities made a halfhearted attempt to enforce the decree. This James Graeme could have been a Templar, or a descendant—and Templegrange certainly suggests a former Templar connection of his estate, just like Templemor.”

“But what would Templars be doing with the Seal of Solomon?” McLeod asked.

“Maybe they brought it with them from Jerusalem, when they moved their headquarters to Paris,” Adam said lightly. “I don’t know. For that matter, I don’t know that it’s actually Solomon’s Seal. He also mentioned Dundee, and I also don’t know what connection the Templars had with that. I never had the impression that their holdings were extensive in that area, but I never had reason to investigate specifically, either. I know a lot about Templemor, of course; and there’s the village of Temple, down by Gorebridge, which used to be the main Templar preceptory for Scotland. I don’t think there’s much left standing, though—”

He broke off as a shaken-looking Peter Fiennes came out of the ICU, glancing in their direction and then heading toward them.

“There you are,” Peter said. “I wasn’t sure where you’d gotten to. You must be Inspector McLeod,” he added, offering his hand to McLeod, who shook it. “Thank you for coming along with Adam.”

“I only hope I can help your local police find the culprits,” McLeod said. “I’m very sorry for your loss, Mr. Fiennes. I wish I’d known your father. I’ve heard Adam speak of him often, and in glowing terms.”

“You’re very kind,” Peter said, obviously restraining his emotions only with an effort. He returned his gaze to Adam and drew a fortifying breath. “Adam, if you and the inspector haven’t made other plans, I’d be very grateful if you’d both come and stay at my mother’s house tonight. You’d have to share a room, I’m afraid, but I’d feel better if you’re there for her in the morning, when some of the shock begins to wear off.”

Adam glanced at McLeod, who gave a sober nod.

“Whatever you think best, Adam. We have an offer from Walter as well, but it sounds like you might be needed more with Mrs. Fiennes.”

“If you’re sure it won’t be an imposition,” Adam said to Peter. “You’ll have heavy family obligations in the next few days. I wouldn’t want to intrude.”

“It’s no intrusion, believe me,” Peter replied. “Besides, if you stay at the house, you can start going through Father’s papers first thing in the morning. One always feels so helpless at a time like this. At least maybe something in his notes will help with the police investigation.”

Chapter Four

THEY WERE AT
Nathan’s files shortly after ten the next morning, following a substantial breakfast served up by Peter’s wife. Rachel was still asleep, thanks to the light sedative Adam had persuaded her to take the night before, and her younger son, Lawrence, had assumed responsibility for arranging the funeral, which would take place the following morning. As the house began to buzz with the bustle of callers coming to offer their condolences downstairs, Peter conducted Adam and McLeod up to Nathan’s study and gave them a quick briefing on the general form of his father’s research notes.

“There’re these two boxes of index cards,” Peter said, thumping the two green file boxes on the desktop, “and then there’s three—no,
four
hard-backed notebooks.” He pulled these from a bottom desk drawer and slapped them down beside the boxes. Nathan had kept the notebooks in ballpoint pen, and the pen’s impression on the thin paper had made the pages bulge slightly from between the grey marbleized covers.

“Here’s some more stuff,” Peter went on, pulling out a slim stack of file folders and large manila envelopes. “One of these ought to be—yes: photos of the Seal. I knew these were around here somewhere. He sent me one, years ago, and I used to keep it thumbtacked to my bulletin board at college. Of course, I had no idea how old it was, in those days. Neither did Dad, I suppose.”

Adam glanced at the photo Peter held out, gesturing for him to show it to McLeod, and picked up one of the notebooks at random, riffling experimentally through its pages.

“At least it looks like he kept his notes in plain English,” he observed. “I was half-afraid we might find ourselves having to grapple with some kind of personal cipher.”

“Well, there may be something worse than that,” Peter said, delving into another desk drawer and lifting out a very compact laptop computer. “I know he’d started using this the last couple of years. I’d be willing to bet that most of the recent material is in here.”

As he set it on a clear spot on the desk, McLeod positioned his aviator spectacles more squarely on his nose and gestured toward the chair before the desk.

“May I?” he asked, also including the machine in his gesture.

“Of course.”

Sitting, McLeod opened the screen and turned the computer on. A series of standard commands got the system booted up and running, and finally produced a directory listing such intriguing headings as
Britmus, Dundee, Resasst,
and
Tmplgrng,
but it also demanded a password to gain further access.

“I don’t suppose you know what your father’s password was for these files?” McLeod asked Peter, as he tried, first, SEAL and then SOLOMON and failed to get in.

Peter shook his head. “I’m afraid I don’t. It’s possible Mother might know, but I doubt it.”

“Well, I don’t know about Noel,” Adam said, “but I’m afraid my computer skills aren’t up to hacking into protected files without some expert assistance. Would you mind if we take this away with us, Peter?”

“Not at all, if you think it will help,” he said. “Good Lord, that must be maddening, to know there’s possibly useful material there, and not be able to get at it.” He glanced at the boxes and notebooks. “Do you think these will be any help?”

“We’ll have a quick scan through them and see,” Adam said, as McLeod shut down the computer and closed its screen. “Meanwhile, if you want to go and see if your mother has stirred yet, or your brother needs help—”

“I can take a hint,” Peter said with an awkward smile. “I’ll leave you two at it. Let me know if I can help you with anything else.”

When Peter had gone, closing the study door behind him, Adam pulled another chair closer and resumed his perusal of the least thumbed of the notebooks. McLeod had already shifted his attention to the first file box, and was flipping through the cards in it.

“What do you think?” Adam said.

McLeod shook his head. “It isn’t going to be easy. This is right out of my league.”

“You may surprise yourself,” Adam said. “What have you got?”

“Well, these appear to be bibliographical references,” McLeod replied. “He’s got books, articles, manuscripts, and other miscellaneous documents, mostly about biblical archaeology and a lot on the Knights Templar and the Crusades. A good many of the citations seem to come from libraries on the Continent.

“Ah, now, this may prove interesting,” he said, pulling out a card and holding its place with a finger as he tilted the card toward the light from the window. “Look here, in the lower right-hand comer. Would you say those are initials? Maybe the initials of the researcher who made the citation?”

Adam glanced over at what he was doing and gave a nod. “That would be my guess. Are there many different sets?”

Returning the card to its place and fingering along farther in the stack, McLeod made an affirmative grunt.

“Looks like there could be a dozen or so. The entries themselves have been typed on a variety of machines, apparently over quite a span of time. Some of these cards look pretty old and dog-eared. Shall I try to pull a list of initials?”

“Yes, and it wouldn’t hurt to see if you can match any of them to names in Nathan’s address book, if we can find that,” Adam replied, setting aside the notebook he had been looking at and leaning in to open the desk drawer. As he bent to peer inside, feeling toward the back among the untidy piles of envelopes and index cards, McLeod conducted the same sort of search in the drawers on the left.

The elusive address book turned up in the top drawer on the right. Adam flipped through it briefly, illogically hoping that a name would pique his attention, then handed it to McLeod.

“See what you can do with that,” he said, picking up the stack of notebooks. “If you can come up with a list of initials in the next hour or two, I’ll ask Peter to have a look at it when we break for lunch. Meanwhile, the address book may provide some preliminary guesses.”

As McLeod moved a yellow pad closer and pulled a pen from an inside coat pocket, Adam took the stack of notebooks over to an. armchair nearer the window, where he settled down for a serious read. The most recent one had only half a dozen entries, mainly having to do with background on seals similar to the one until recently in Nathan’s possession. Apparently Nathan had recently received confirmation of his own Seal’s antiquity.

Prepared for a long and probably fruitless search, Adam set the notebook aside and picked up the next most recent one. As he flipped to the end, intending to work backwards from the material he had already read, the notebook fell open to a letter-folded piece of paper tucked snugly into the crease of the binding. It proved to be a photocopy of a letter from a Dr. Albrecht Steiner, in the art history department of the Sorbonne, to someone named Henri Gerard at a Paris address. It was dated the previous March.

“Noel, do the initials ‘H.G.’ appear on any of your cards?” Adam asked, as he skimmed over the typewritten French with growing interest.

“Yes, quite a few,” McLeod replied. “What have you got?”

“A copy of a letter to a Henri Gerard from the Sorbonne,” Adam replied. “It appears to be a report on a metal sample taken from Nathan’s Seal and sent to their labs for—well, now.”

McLeod looked up. “What does it say?”

“Well, unless my French has totally failed me, the man who wrote this letter dates the piece from around 950 B.C.—what’s known as the First Temple Period. He apparently was working from detailed photographs of the Seal. And listen to this,” he said, translating. “Chemical analysis of the sample provided is compatible with bronze samples taken from the prehistoric mineworks at Tell el-Kheleifeh, more popularly known as King Solomon’s Mines.”

“King Solomon’s Mines?” McLeod repeated. “Adam, do you think the stolen Seal really
is
the Seal of Solomon?”

Adam shook his head. “I wouldn’t go that far, based on the evidence I’ve seen so far. But I wouldn’t rule out the possibility, either. I wonder what other intriguing tidbits we’re going to find. Oh, Nathan, I wish you could have told me more about what’s going on . . .”

They carried on with their research for the remainder of the morning, until Peter Fiennes came to summon them downstairs for lunch. Lawrence had gone to the airport with Peter’s wife to collect Nathan’s sister and her family, so they were only four at table.

“What can you tell me about Henri Gerard?” Adam asked, over green salad and grilled cheese sandwiches washed down with a crisp Riesling. “I gather that he was one of your father’s researchers.”

Peter exchanged a glance with his mother, who was looking reassuringly composed as she settled into her first full day of widowhood.

“What makes you ask about
him?”
Peter replied.

“Just that I found a copy of a letter to him. Apparently he had lab tests run on a metal sample taken from the Seal.”

He showed the letter around while he related the general findings of the report.

“Aside from the information being very interesting, though, it’s the name that interests me,” he said, as he took the letter back. “Henri Gerard is the first name we’ve come up with, who we know is connected with Nathan’s research. Noel has compiled a list of initials he’d like you to look at, after you’ve finished lunch, to see if you can assign names. We suspect they’re other researchers who have worked with your father, and the police will probably want to talk to some of them, to start forming a profile of who might have wanted to steal the Seal.”

“Well, I can’t imagine any of them would be involved in something like that,” Peter said. “Gerard’s a little older than most of the assistants Father worked with, over the years—a bit of an eccentric, in the manner of many dedicated scholars, but I’m sure he’s harmless.”

“He probably is,” Adam replied. “How did he and your father meet?”

Peter gave a halfhearted shrug. “Gerard spent a sabbatical here a couple of years ago, right after a team of archaeologists uncovered a previously unknown burial ground in the medieval Jewish quarter of the city. At the time, he was pursuing some crackpot theory that the Knights Templar had been making an in-depth study of Jewish necromancy. That’s what I meant by ‘eccentric,”” he added at Adam’s look of surprise. “The trial of the Templars is his area of special expertise. He was hoping the grave sites might yield up some support for his theory. He needed some help with some Hebrew translations, so the site supervisor put him onto my father.”

“Was
there evidence of Jewish necromancy?” Adam asked.

“Of course not. So far as I know, that research never came to anything. But he got interested in what Dad was doing, that summer he was here, and he sort of became Dad’s continental contact for tracking down obscure references. I know he has access to parts of the Vatican Archives that most people can’t get at. Can’t tell you much more about him, though.”

“Well, that’s probably sufficient on him for now,” Adam said, glancing at McLeod. “How about taking a look at Noel’s list of initials, and seeing if you can supply us with some more names?”

“Sure. Let’s see,” he said, turning his attention to the list McLeod passed him. “Ah, ‘N.G.’ That would be Nina Gresham. She was a dear. She did a Ph.D. under Dad’s supervision a couple of years ago. I think she’s at some private institute in Italy now. She isn’t Jewish, but her Hebrew is almost as good as Dad’s. I don’t know where she picked it up. She has six or eight ancient languages. Works with documents from the time of the Crusades.”

“What about this ‘T.B.’?”

“That would be Tevye Berman. He’s Israeli, was working on a dig in Jerusalem near the site of the old Temple. A good guy. I think he’s dead now, though.”

“And ‘M.O.’?”

“Couldn’t tell you.”

“How about ‘K.S.’?”

“Karen Slater, maybe. Or it could be Keith Sherman. They’ve both worked for Dad, over the years.”

In the next quarter hour, Peter Fiennes was able to assign names to almost all of the initials McLeod had gleaned from the file cards, with his mother supplying a few he had not known. After coffee, Adam and McLeod went back upstairs to continue their research and leave the family their privacy.

Most of the names matched those McLeod had been able to glean from Nathan’s address book, compiled on a second list with addresses and telephone numbers. The ones that matched, McLeod ticked and copied onto a master list, while Adam continued to read in Nathan’s notebooks. By four, when it was clear that McLeod had done about all he could at this end, he rang Walter Phipps at York Police headquarters to arrange for transportation to the airport for the 5:50 flight back to Edinburgh.

“There’s really no point in my hanging around here for the funeral, since I didn’t know your Nathan,” he said, when he had made the call. “I can probably do a whole lot more from home. When Walter collects me, I’ll give him this copy of the names and addresses of the research assistants, and let his lads follow up on the conventional aspects of the case. Meanwhile, I’ll have a go at cracking those computer files tonight.”

“That might save us some time,” Adam agreed. “There’s nothing in the last notebook since spring, so it’s quite possible that some of his recent correspondence is in there—anything that might give us a clue what we’re up against. What about this Henri Gerard? Am I grasping at straws, just because Peter said he was a bit eccentric, or do you think he figures in the case? There
is
a Templar connection.”