The Templar's Code (2 page)

Uncertain whether they were friend or foe, Yann placed his right hand over his racing heart and bowed his head. “I am Yann Gugues . . . the Stone Keeper’s son.”

Afraid that he’d been followed, Jason Lovett scanned the crowded subway platform as he pushed his way through the slow-moving throng.

Not seeing the pretty boy bastard who’d been tailing him, he noisily exhaled.

The exit turnstile was at the other end of the Dupont Circle station and he was in a big-ass hurry. The lecture was scheduled to end at one o’clock. It was his only chance to speak with Caedmon Aisquith. And, hopefully, to make a proposition the English historian turned author couldn’t refuse. He had fifteen minutes to get to the lecture hall.

“It’s like bovines being loaded off a cattle car,” he muttered, now sandwiched between a pudgy soccer mom and her equally plump teenage daughter. Afraid he would get stuck on the escalator behind a couple of lard asses, he squeezed past.

No sooner did he clear the obstacle than a dude in an even bigger hurry bumped into him, prying loose the book Lovett had tucked under his arm. He made an awkward save, catching the hardcover volume before it hit the deck. The subway had seemed a good idea at the time; now he wasn’t so sure. Earlier, he’d gone to Union Station where he bought a train ticket for Richmond. He’d even boarded the train, bailing out just before it left the station. Moments after that, he caught the westbound subway. An elaborate hoax to make the pretty boy bastard think he was leaving town.

God, he hoped the ruse worked.

Feeling a trickle of sweat roll down the side of his face, he wiped his shirt sleeve across his brow, the humid air inside the cavernous station jungle-like.

Finally reaching the turnstile, he snatched his subway ticket out of the metal slot and rushed toward the escalator. Head bent, he sprinted up the left side. Glancing upward, he groaned, the escalator at least a city block long. Ten years had come and gone since he rowed crew at Brown University, his lung capacity not what it used to be.

A few moments later, wheezing like an old fart with emphysema, he stepped off the escalator. He glanced around the urban neighborhood, disoriented. Dupont Circle was a hip hodgepodge of cafés, bookstores, and high-end art galleries. The nearby traffic circle, with at least six streets radiating out in all directions, didn’t help.

He stopped a middle-aged suit rushing past. “Excuse me,” he huffed, still working on catching his breath. “I’m looking for the House of the Temple.”

The suit pointed to one of the radiating streets. “Two blocks up New Hampshire. Turn right on S Street,” he brusquely replied, clearly annoyed that the last five seconds of his life had been stolen from him.

Lovett nodded his thanks. Ignoring the traffic signal, he darted in front of a yellow cab. His jaywalking incited several motorists to lay on the horn.

Figuring he’d catch his breath at the other end of the line, he jogged down New Hampshire Avenue, the tree-lined street relatively free of pedestrian traffic. The embassies of Zimbabwe, Namibia, and Nicaragua passed in a blur.

He peered over his shoulder.

Damn.
There was a dark-haired man about a block back. He didn’t think it was the pretty boy bastard.
But then again, it might be
.

Catching sight of an English basement on a nearby town house, he veered off course, ducking into the brick stairwell. He scrunched out of sight, wedging himself between a metal garbage can and a blue recycling bin. Worried he might puke, or even pass out, he ripped open the Velcro flap on his cargo pants and removed a prescription bottle. The doctor at the walk-in clinic prescribed the Xanax to help manage his anxiety. He’d taken one an hour ago and so far it hadn’t done jack.

Fumbling with the childproof lid, he popped another tablet into his mouth.

A second later, his courage in freefall, he peered over the brick retaining wall. The dark-haired man was now a half block away. Still too far to make out his features.

Lovett shoved his hand back into his pocket, this time removing a small digital voice recorder. He’d been keeping a verbal diary.
Just in case
.

Fearing the worst, he switched it on. Then, in a lowered voice, he continued. “If someone is listening to this, shit, it means the fucker finally caught up to me. Just so we’re clear, I’m not paranoid. I
am
being stalked. But there’s too much at stake to tuck tail and run. No way in hell I’m going to let that pretty boy bastard take what’s mine. If he wants the treasure, he’s going to have to—”

The dark-haired man strolled past.

Lovett sagged against the brick wall, relieved.

Hoping the Xanax kicked in sooner rather than later, he shoved the recorder back in his pocket and climbed out of the stairwell.

At S Street, he turned right. About a hundred yards down, he caught sight of the House of the Temple, a colossus of stone that took up an entire city block.

What kind of drugs were the Freemasons taking when they constructed the ungodly structure?

The House of the Temple looked like an ancient Greek sanctuary with a truncated pyramid plunked on the top of it. The pyramid bore an uncanny resemblance to the one on the back of the dollar bill. Which no doubt gave conspiracy theorists a hard-on. Add to that the giant pair of sphinxes that flanked the imposing granite steps and the whole thing put him in mind of the Temple of Mausolus at Halicarnassus. Which was kind of ironic, since he spent a summer at Bodrum working on an archaeology dig. Slaving away, actually, grad students forced to do all the grunt work. But then he dug up a gold earring. Talk about an adrenaline rush. It sure beat the hell out of sifting through potsherds.

Deciding there and then that the real glory was in treasure hunting, he spent the next summer at Key West, volunteering with the Fisher expedition.
Man alive
. It was an adrenaline rush on steroids, gold and silver bars strewn across the ocean floor, there for the picking. But not the taking, the Fisher folks being a real proprietary lot. Possessed of a first-class education and a burning desire to make his mark on the world, he figured he could find his own treasure trove.

And he was damned closed to doing just that.

But he needed help.

That’s why he was standing in front of the butt-ugly building.

Knowing he only had a few minutes before the clock struck one, Lovett took the steps two at a time, counting thirty-three of them. At the top, he opened a massive pair of bronze doors. About to step inside, he glanced over his shoulder.

The pretty boy bastard was nowhere in sight.

“. . . leaving no question in my mind that the Ark of the Covenant was a form of ancient technology inherited from the Egyptians,” Caedmon Aisquith told his audience, more than a few of whom had a copy of his book
Isis Revealed
in plain sight.

“Next question?” He pointed to a woman sitting in the front row of the library reading room. At least four dozen jurists’ chairs had been placed in the middle of the room, turning the book-lined chamber into a makeshift lecture hall.

The bespectacled attendee glanced from side to side, verifying that she was indeed the chosen questioner. “Yes, I’m, um, curious about your recent trip to Ethiopia, which you briefly mentioned in the lecture. How do you know the Ark of the Covenant isn’t hidden there?”

Discreetly glancing at his wristwatch, Caedmon saw that there was nearly five minutes left in the Q&A session. Ample time to flesh out the answer. Stepping over to the nearby table, he scanned the thumbnail picture gallery on his laptop. Image selected, he accessed the PowerPoint display, projecting a map of Ethiopia onto the screen behind him.

“For those of you unfamiliar with the tale, Menelik, the illegitimate son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, supposedly stole the Ark of the Covenant from his father’s fabled temple in Jerusalem and took it to Ethiopia in the mid-tenth century B.C., where it’s reputedly still hidden, safeguarded by the priests at St. Mary of Zion located in Axum.” Using a laser pointer, Caedmon indicated an area in the northeastern quadrant of Ethiopia, Axum, located one hundred kilometers from the Red Sea.

“Keen to explore the theory, my research assistant and I traveled to Ethiopia this past January.” He gestured to a woman with long, curly brown hair standing on the sidelines, leaning against a bookcase. Attired in an ankle-length denim dress with a crimson red shawl tied not around her shoulders but around her hips, she was the lone peacock in the drab-feathered flock. “At this juncture, allow me to introduce my traveling companion, photographer Edie Miller.”

As if on cue, every head in the group swiveled to the left.

Edie Miller acknowledged the collective stare with an amused half smile.

Introduction made, he next pulled up a stunning photograph of St. Mary’s taken at sunset, the stone building bathed in a tangerine glow.

“After visiting numerous monasteries and chapels, examining scores of illuminated manuscripts, and interviewing the chief priest at St. Mary’s, I can now punch a very big hole in the Menelik theory.” He took no pleasure in the announcement, certain at one time that he’d find the Ark in Axum. “While a
tabot
, that being the Ethiopian word for ark, is safeguarded within the church sanctuary, it is, alas, a twelfth-century replica of the Old Testament original.”

He put the last image onto the screen, a line drawing of the Ark of the Covenant based on the description in the book of Exodus.

“Our field research in Africa was conclusive: Menelik did not take the Ark of the Covenant to Ethiopia.” Scanning the group, he squinted, barely able to see in the dimly lit library, the window shutters closed tight. “All right, who’d like to take the next stab at me? Yes, the gentleman in the blue pullover.”

A stout middle-aged man rose to his feet. “Well, if Menelik didn’t steal the Ark, who did?”

“There are a number of suspects in the rogues’ gallery. What we do know is that the Ark of the Covenant disappeared from the pages of the Bible soon after the construction of Solomon’s Temple. Whether captured or hidden, its current whereabouts are unknown. But rest assured, the Ark
is
out there . . . waiting to be discovered.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Edie pointedly tap an index finger against her watch crystal.

Warning bell sounded, Caedmon cleared his throat. “Yes, well, that concludes our discussion of the Egyptian origins of the Ark of the Covenant. I would like to thank the chief librarian at the House of the Temple, Mr. Franklin Davis, for hosting today’s lecture.” He motioned to a gray-bearded man in the front row. He’d met the librarian at a Washington book signing some months back. When an invitation had been extended to speak at the national headquarters for the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, he’d gladly accepted. “And, of course, I would like to extend a warm note of thanks to a most inquisitive audience.”

As the overhead lights came on, Caedmon acknowledged the polite applause with a self-conscious smile. Uncomfortable in the role of public author, he knew such venues not only sold books but also attracted individuals with a keen interest in Egyptian history. And mystery. The latter near and dear to him. While he’d been trained as a historian, he preferred to think of himself as a “rehistorian,” legend, lore, and mysticism at the heart of his research endeavors. An unholy trinity that compelled several book reviewers to wrongly accuse him of being a conspiracy theorist.

Glancing around the room, he could see a few nattering clusters milling about, most of the attendees en route to the refreshment table set up in the adjacent banquet hall. In dire need of a thirst quencher, the obligatory lecturer’s glass having already been drained, he bent over the wooden table and proceeded to shut down the laptop computer.