The Armageddon Conspiracy (20 page)

‘
If the Christians had
the fish, what do these superconspirators use?’

‘
My grandfather was
sure there was one quick way to identify them: the Skull and
Crossbones.’

‘
Why that?’

‘
Do you know where the
Skull and Bones originates?’

‘
Pirates?’
Vernon
replied, with an unsure smile.
‘The Jolly Roger?’

Gresnick nodded.
‘
Jolly Roger
is a
corruption of the French term
jolie
rouge
, which means
pretty red
in
English
.
It was the
nickname the Knights Templar gave to the flag flown by their fleet.
The flag was a white Skull and Crossbones on a blood-red
background.
When the Templars buried their dead comrades, they
removed the head and the legs and placed them in a Skull and
Crossbones arrangement.

‘
Freemasonry is also
full of Skull and Crossbones symbols.
And the SS chose the
Totenkopf, the Death’s Head – a skull on crossbones – as their cap
badge.
My grandfather was convinced that the Cathars also used that
symbol, though he only found circumstantial evidence.’

‘
OK, maybe they all
used the Skull and Crossbones,’ Vernon said.
‘But it doesn’t prove
they belonged to the same conspiracy.
Maybe they just like the
symbol.
I mean, pirates used it too, and they’re not part of your
conspiracy.’

‘
Aren’t
they?’

‘
Come on, you can’t be
suggesting pirates were in on it.’

‘
Listen, the Knights
Templar were officially dissolved by the papacy.
After that, anyone
who still dared to call himself a Templar was excommunicated.
It’s
a fact that the Templar fleet vanished before the authorities got
the opportunity to seize their ships.
The Templars’ treasure
vanished with their ships.
Most people assumed the treasure was
loaded onto the fleet and taken to an unknown destination.
Maybe
Scotland, maybe Oak Island in Nova Scotia.
If they buried it in a
remote location, they were sure to have made a map.’

Vernon could see where this was
leading.
‘Treasure maps and Jolly Rogers – it sounds like pirates
but you’re telling me it was the Knights Templar all along.’

Gresnick leaned back in his seat.
‘The
Templars were the first pirates.
They were excellent sailors, and
they were outlaws under a death sentence if they should ever be
caught.
What else would you expect them to do?
Over time, the last
of the official Templars died out, but no doubt they had children
and passed on their traditions.’

Vernon couldn’t deny it was a plausible
theory.
‘But the pirates used a black Jolly Roger and the Templars
red.
Why the difference?’

‘
Pirates used two Jolly
Rogers.
The usual one was the black Jolly Roger, but it was the
other one, the red, that seafarers dreaded most.
When pirates flew
the red Jolly Roger it signified
No
Quarter
.
They would slaughter everyone they
found onboard an enemy vessel.
The red Jolly Roger – the Templar
flag – was the most terrifying sight on the high seas.
Ships
belonging to Catholic powers – Spain, Portugal and France, in
particular – were almost exclusively the pirates’ targets, as
revenge for what the papacy did to the Templars.’

‘
And you think the
Skull and Crossbones flutters across the world even
now?’

‘
One of the most
powerful secret societies in the world is based at Yale University
and comprises current and past students.
Many of the former
students have gone on to be amongst the richest and most
influential people on earth, assisted at every step by the guiding
hand of their secret society.
President Adams was a member, and so
is the new President.
In fact many presidents, CEOs, and Directors
of the FBI and CIA have been members.’

‘
What’s it
called?’

‘
Skull and
Bones.’

Vernon’s stomach turned as the
helicopter climbed sharply.
The weird acoustics were freaking him
out too.
He hated the combination of whirring blades, thrumming
engines, and shouting voices inside the passenger cabin.

‘
But isn’t there one
big problem with your theory?’
he said.
‘I mean, that the Cathars,
the Knights Templar, the Freemasons and the Nazis are all different
guises of an ancient secret society?’

‘
A problem?’

‘
Well, didn’t Hitler
hate the Freemasons?
He persecuted them.
Many of them ended up in
concentration camps.’

Gresnick smirked.
‘To a
true Freemason there’s nothing more embarrassing than toy-town
Freemasons.
Ninety-nine percent of modern Freemasons don’t have a
clue what Freemasonry is about, or what true Freemasons actually
believe.
Most Freemasons nowadays just want to be part of an
I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine
group of social climbers.
Throw in a few spooky
ceremonies, some titillating ancient oaths and curses, a bit of
ceremonial dressing up, declarations of undying loyalty to “the
brotherhood” and you have yourself an irresistible package for
shallow, greedy capitalists.

‘
Hitler, as a Freemason
of the highest possible order, despised them.
They were a mockery
of the true principles of Freemasonry.
It’s no wonder he wanted rid
of them.

‘
To be fair, these
amateur Freemasons once served a purpose.
They were an effective
weapon against the Catholic Church.
Freemasons were forever
agitating against priests and popes.
The Catholic Church responded
by forbidding any Catholic from joining the Freemasons.
If they
could have managed it, they would have subjected the Freemasons to
all the rigours of the Inquisition, but Freemasons only came out
into the open in Protestant countries.

‘
With the Inquisition
consigned to history, and the Vatican just a colourful historical
pageant, there’s no need for ersatz Freemasons.
They’re an
embarrassment.’

‘
How do you know all
this?’
Vernon asked.

‘
I told you, my
grandfather researched this stuff for decades and passed on his
work to my parents.
This is my family’s life’s work.
We’ve given
everything to make sense of this conspiracy.
Not only out of
academic curiosity.
We genuinely believe these people pose a threat
to the world.’

‘
But if they
communicate in code all the time, how can you find out what’s going
on?’

‘
Codes can be broken.
Many times in history, members of the conspiracy have been captured
and tortured until they revealed their secrets.
We’ve gained huge
insights into how they operate.
One of their main techniques was to
use elaborate, ambiguous metaphors.’

‘
Like the Holy
Grail?’

‘
Exactly.
That’s their
ultimate metaphor, but there have been many others.’

‘
Such as?’

‘
Take Alchemy.
The very
last thing Alchemists were seeking was something that literally
turned base metals into gold.
They were highly religious people
seeking true knowledge of the universe, hence their obsession with
obscure experiments.
The “base metals” they were talking about were
ordinary people.
The “gold” was what people became when they
discovered the True God.
When they talked about an elixir of life,
the Alchemists meant the promise of eternal life offered by the
True God.
Similarly, when they spoke about finding a cure for all
human diseases, they meant heaven, where no one suffers any
illness.’

‘
You make them sound
like priests.’

‘
That’s exactly what
they were.
Their predecessors were the Druids.’

‘
So, the Alchemists
were part of the superconspiracy too?’

‘
Any time you come
across an unusual group of people attracting the hostility of the
Catholic Church, you can be sure they’re part of it.’

‘
And they will all be
using metaphorical ways of speaking?’

‘
I think you’re finding
it hard to take this in, but it’s simple stuff.
All you have to
bear in mind is that whenever Christians are faced with a choice
between a literal and a metaphorical interpretation of something,
they’ll invariably accept the literal interpretation even when it’s
absurd.
Especially
when it’s absurd.’

‘
I don’t
understand.’

‘
I’ll give you a few
examples.
The Johannite sect in ancient Judea referred to John the
Baptist as the
Word of
God
.
So, an expression like “The Word of
God could be heard by all” merely meant that John the Baptist was
speaking loudly enough for the people at the back of the crowd to
hear him.
It certainly didn’t mean that God was talking to the
human race.
Nor did it mean that they thought John the Baptist was
God; simply that he was God’s chosen mouthpiece.
He spoke
for
God, not
as
God.

‘
Similarly, the
Johannites referred to non-Johannites as “blind” because they
couldn’t
see
the
light of the True God.
When John the Baptist converted someone, he
was “making the blind see” i.e.
introducing them to the true
religion.
He wasn’t curing actual blind people of physical
blindness.
“Lepers” were Johannites who had lapsed from the true
religion, making them “untouchable” as far as practising Johannites
were concerned.
“Curing a leper” meant bringing such a person back
to the fold; it had nothing to do with a diseased person being
cured of leprosy.

‘
The “dead” were those
who were excommunicated from the religion for grave offences.
To be
“raised from the dead” meant to be released from excommunication.
Any Johannite would have regarded the idea that it signified a man
coming back from actual death as ridiculous.
And, think about it,
if Jesus really raised Lazarus from the dead, it would be one of
the most well known events in history, talked about by everyone.
Lazarus would be famous, invited to Rome to see the Emperor to
describe his experience.
As it was, no further mention was ever
made of Lazarus.
How could a man who came back from the dead be
forgotten so easily?
Obviously, he never died in the first place,
and no one who was there at the time said he did.

‘
The “poor” were those
who’d newly joined the Johannite sect and still had much to learn;
the “sick” were those who had heard the message and rejected it.
New Johannites were only allowed to drink water for the first year;
afterwards they were permitted to have wine.
So, turning “water
into wine” simply meant helping new Johannites through their
initiation period.
“Walking on water” described the final part of
the initiation ceremony.
Johannites threw themselves in a line in
front of their religious master to prove their devotion and
subservience.
Barefooted, he walked over them.
Christians, of
course, took this all too literally, as ever.
Those “with ears to
hear” understood the coded language perfectly; outsiders had no
idea of what was being discussed.
Christians, entirely on the
outside, never tired of getting it spectacularly, almost comically,
wrong.’