The God Machine (26 page)

“Perhaps they were cut short,” Sajan said.

Koster frowned, shook his head. “That doesn't make sense,” he replied. He reached into his bag and took out his Garmin again. “Here,” he said, pointing. “According to the coordinates we uncovered in Washington, what we're looking for should be just beyond this wall.” He put his instruments and his bag on the floor. Then he ran the flat of his palm down the wall. “Can you see the shape of the arch? Look closely. These bricks are different. Not just their color, but the feel of them. These were added much later. There once was a door here.”

“You're certain?”

“Only one way to be sure.” Koster moved to the corner. He scanned through the work tools and picked up a pick and a handful of rags.

“What are you doing? You can't just start digging up the place. They'll hear us.”

“Perhaps.” Koster wrapped the tip of the pick with the
rags. Then he heaved it over his shoulder and smashed it against the brick wall. The bricks shuddered, but held. He struck them again. Several bricks seemed to buckle. Koster got down on his hands and his knees. A small hole had opened up at the foot of the wall. He reached into the opening. His arm passed all the way through! He peered in. There was something there, he was sure of it. A room of sorts. But it was dark and he couldn't see more than a few inches inside. Using the tip of the pick he cleared away more bricks, enlarging the opening. “Hand me that flashlight,” he said to Sajan. “And the digital camera. In my bag.”

Sajan did so. Again, Koster thrust his hand in the hole. He turned on the flashlight and the beam split the darkness beyond. It was a room, Koster realized. And it stretched back a fair distance. He slid the camera in his pocket and crawled through the opening. The beam of the flashlight picked up the intricate black-and-white tiling of the floor, and then a dais at the opposite end.

“What is it?” Sajan said, following him.

“A Masonic temple. I've seen something like this once before. Under the cathedral at Chartres,” Koster said. He swung the flashlight about. The dais was an altar, he realized. On its top lay a Compass and Square.
But where is the sacred text?
he wondered. For a moment he had hoped to discover the Gospel of Judas laid out on the surface.

“But why would they build a temple here?” Sajan wanted to know.

“The Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania moved its headquarters from building to building. The Tun Tavern. Independence Hall. Why not here? It's secluded and private, and yet at the center of things. And with the Library upstairs, it was certainly convenient.”

Koster circled the dais. Then, he stopped. What was
that? It looked like a crack in the limestone. He pointed the flashlight. The fissure seemed to run down one side, just a few inches from the altar's edge. And then across, too. “Here, hold this for a second.” He gave her the flashlight. “Point it here.”

Koster ran his fingernails along the line. It was a crack. And it moved! He pushed and the surface silently gave way, swiveling off to the side. He'd opened some sort of cabinet, hidden right in the stone.

“A reliquary?” Sajan asked, stepping closer.

“This may have once housed sacred objects—like the Compass and Square. And documents, too.”

“Like the Gospel of Judas.”

“Perhaps. But it's empty.” Then he caught sight of something way at the back. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Shine the light in.”

Koster reached into the opening and felt about with his hand. The inside of the cabinet was covered with grime and he wondered just how many centuries it had been since someone else had stood where they stood, in this spot. Had it been Franklin himself? It was like dipping a hand into the river of history. For a moment, Koster thought he felt something move. He pulled back instinctively, when his fingers brushed some object within. It felt like a small wad of paper or cloth, about the size of a handkerchief.

“What is it?” Sajan said.

Koster placed it carefully on the surface of the altar, right beside the Compass and Square. Sajan took a step closer, fixing the object in the beam of the flashlight. It was vellum or sheepskin. It was certainly too thick to be paper, Koster thought. And it had been folded, over and over again. Carefully, he picked at the edges. He started to pull it apart. One rectangle at a time, it slowly unraveled. Koster's heart quickened as he realized what he might hold in his hands. Franklin's map. Or at least the
first piece of it. He stretched the sheepskin out with his hand.

It
was
a map. But it was like no map Koster had ever seen before. While the surface was covered with curious illustrations and drawings, they didn't seem to match any landmass he knew. Perhaps because it wasn't complete. Perhaps, Koster realized, they required the other two pieces to really see what it was. “Do you recognize it?” he asked. “It's more like a schematic than a map.”

“Or a piece of one. Look at the edge.” Sajan pointed.

“It's been torn.”

“And look there, at the writing. That's the same Masonic code we saw in Franklin's letter to Madame Helvétius.”

Koster whipped out the digital camera. He snapped a few pictures of the map. For a few seconds the chamber exploded with light. Then, he pulled out his pad and began to translate the text. Slowly but surely, the sentence slipped out:
'Twas twenty-two in Dashwood's time
. He read it aloud.

Sajan shook her head. “Who's Dashwood?” she asked.

“The only Dashwood I know is Sir Francis. He was Britain's Postmaster General and Chancellor of the Exchequer for a while. Franklin's counterpart. They were friends while Franklin lived in Great Britain. Any way, Dashwood started this secret society. Some say it was mostly a drinking club. It certainly didn't push moderation, as so many other Masonic groups did at the time. They called themselves the Brotherhood of Saint Francis of Wycombe. From West Wycombe, in Buckinghamshire. He had an estate there. But most people knew them as the Friars of the Hell-Fire Club.”

“In England?” Sajan said.
“‘My three homes.’
Isn't that what Franklin wrote in his journal? That's where we'll find the next piece of the map, Joseph.”

Koster turned toward Sajan and snapped her picture. For a moment, the flash glared, and he caught her, mid-smile. But when he looked at the camera display, she wasn't smiling at all. She was staring at something behind him.

F
RANKLIN WAS RETURNING HOME FROM A NIGHT ON THE
town—following the King's Coronation at Westminster Abbey—when it finally happened, as he knew that it would. He'd been waiting for years.

It had been a splendid event. The Sovereign had entered Westminster to the blowing of horns, wearing the red Robe of State. He had taken his seat on the Chair of Estate, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Chamberlain, the Lord Chancellor and the Earl Marshal had moved off to the four corners of the Abbey. Facing each corner in turn, the archbishop had called for the Recognition of the Sovereign, with the words, “Sirs, I here present unto you, George the Third, your undoubted King.”

As the archbishop administered the oath, the king had dropped to his knees. He looked like a brand-new gold coin, freshly minted, dressed in a gold damask coat and gold breeches, with white stockings, white shoes with gold buckles and cherry-red heels. His blue velvet mantle had been lined with white ermine, edged with
gold, over a surcoat lined and edged with more ermine, cinched by a great silver belt from which dangled his sword.

In truth, Franklin would never have noticed these sartorial details were it not for the fact that he was seated next to a Mr. Edward B. Ravenscroft of Ede and Ravenscroft, haberdashers to the Crown. It had been the busiest year ever, the merchant confessed with the grin of a weasel. The company had made clothes for no fewer than sixteen dukes and forty-six earls, and when you factored in the other degrees of peerage, Ede and Ravenscroft was supplying well over a hundred peers. An astonishing figure. Ravenscroft's tailors had spent countless hours at their premises in Holywell Street, tirelessly working through the night to ensure everyone's robes were ready in time for this momentous occasion.

Ravenscroft pointed out several participants in the ceremony. Peers' robes were made of full-length red velvet, he explained, with a cape of ermine. Rows of sealskin spots on the cape designated the peer's rank. Peeresses' ranks were designated not by sealskin spots, he continued, but by the length of their trains and the width of the edging. For duchesses, the trains were two yards; for marchionesses, one and three quarters; for countesses, one and a half; for viscountesses, one and a quarter; and for baronesses and ladies, one yard…

Normally a staunch advocate of the middling classes, Franklin had ducked out of the ceremony early to avoid the gregarious Ravenscroft. He had rendezvoused with his boss, Sir Francis Dashwood, Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer, Postmaster General… and founder of the Hell-Fire Friars.

The two men had spent the next several hours at some local apartments Sir Francis had procured especially for the event. The place had been packed with low women, some of whom Franklin had met on previous
occasions in the caves of Sir Francis's estate in West Wycombe. But, in truth, Franklin's heart wasn't in it.

He had been sitting with a pretty young bawd in his lap, when he had noticed, to his utmost surprise, that nothing was happening. Not a thing. Perhaps, he considered, it was because of what had recently transpired with his bastard son, William.

So Franklin had bid his adieus and refused when Sir Francis had urged him to borrow a carriage. He preferred walking, he told Lord le Despencer. He needed some air.

And he did. He felt foggy and too full of sherry. Franklin continued down Westminster Bridge Road until it straddled the Thames. Along the river flourished trades linked with shipping: sugar-refining, rubber and soap; chemicals, paint and tobacco. The early evening air was thick with their fumes. Franklin stopped for a moment on the bridge and stared out at the Thames. Only a handful of vessels could tie up on the north bank of the river. Most of the ships lay at anchor, in the heart of the flow, side to side. They were forced to unload onto barges. From there, all the imports were brought to the Custom House, which collected more than half of the taxes paid to the realm every year. One hundred ships came and went from the docks every day. Franklin loved to watch them swoop in with their lighters, the sloops and the barges, trying to negotiate the river amid a deluge of shouting and cursing. Coal-whippers and stevedores sweated and sang as they unloaded the colliers which brought hillocks of coal from north England to London each day. A tangle of rigging seemed to girdle the sky. Ships were anchored in two tiers as far as the eye could see, and barges and wherries wiggled between them, trying to get their last cargo ashore before sunset. They carried sugar and rum, tobacco and cocoa and coffee from the Americas. They bore palm oil and ivory
from Africa. And in turn, they were loaded with cases of Birmingham metalware, and with goods made of cotton from Manchester. Like his brand-new blue velvet suit.

There was a time, as a child, when Franklin would have given practically anything to have lived the life of a mariner, to have traveled the world, unfettered and free. But his father had suggested a different apprenticeship. And the tide had departed without him.

Franklin sighed. He crossed the bridge and headed toward Parliament. As he walked, he stared up at Westminster Hall. The building dated back to Edward the Confessor. Once used as a law court, the structure had hosted several notable trials through the years, including those of Sir William Wallace, the Gunpowder Plot conspirators of 1606 and King Charles I in 1649.

Franklin quickened his steps along the Embankment. One day, perhaps, he too would end up in that hall. Things were not going well.

He had returned to London at the age of fifty-one, in 1757, almost thirty-five years since his first visit there as a teenage printer apprentice. Initially, he had thought he would stay for five months, but that had turned into almost five years. He'd found lodging on Craven Street, between the Strand and the river, not far from the ministries of Whitehall. His landlady was a sensible widow named Margaret Stevenson. She had an agreeable disposition and an eighteen-year-old daughter named Mary, known as Polly, who had become a kind of surrogate daughter to him, a counterpart to his real daughter, Sally.

With 750,000 inhabitants, London was the largest city in Europe, second only to Peking—which boasted 900,000. In contrast, Philadelphia, the largest city in America, had only 23,000 residents. In London, Franklin had quickly found favor with the intellectual and literary elite. Collinson, the merchant with whom he had
corresponded about electricity some years earlier, had introduced him to the Royal Society. They had recently elected him their first American member.

Franklin spent most of his days in the coffeehouses—London had more than five hundred of them—in the company of writers, journalists and intellectuals. Fellows of the Royal Society tended to meet at the Grecian coffeehouse in the Strand, not far from Craven Street. In deed, despite his relationship with Sir Francis Dashwood, a Tory, Franklin preferred the company of untitled intellectuals and artists, of merchants and tradesmen. Well, generally, at least. Franklin thought back to the tedious Ravenscroft and shuddered.