The Cathari Treasure (Cameron Kincaid) (23 page)

“Hmm.”  Pepe pressed his
lips together and peered out into the darkness that now blanketed the outside
of the car.

“The attack was not totally
unexpected, some Chevaliers knew the betrayal was to come.  It was
inevitable that the operatives of Rex Mundi would strike, as that is the way of
Rex Mundi.  Measures had already begun to secure the order and the
treasure.  From across France, wagons brought les Templiers and their
papers to their ships in La Rochelle.  Not all of the Chevaliers made it
out so when word came of the others arrest, those gathered with the Cathar in
La Rochelle fled France eventually settling in what is now called Nova
Scotia.  That was seven centuries ago.”

“La Rochelle?” asked Pepe.

“Oui, Monsieur Laroque,” said
Nicole.

Pepe lightly sighed and raised
his brows.

Nicole had finished her story as
quickly as she had started.  She turned her head back out the
window.  The Chevy was now going south down the border of Maine and she
could see a peach ribbon in the distant west where the night had not yet stolen
the sky.

“So it is true then,” said Pepe,
looking west as well.

“So it is,” said Cameron.

* * *
* *

Nova Scotia

After riding in the Chevy for
nine hours, Cameron looked forward to the six-hour sleep ahead of him. 
The ferry would not be crossing from Saint John to Digby until morning. 
Now the ferry terminal, and most everything else in Saint John, was dark. 
Nicole and Pepe had been sleeping since Pepe’s turn to drive three or four
hours ago, though Pepe would grunt on occasion to let Cameron know he was alert
enough if needed.

Cameron parked the Chevy near
the ferry dock.  He rubbed his eyes and then opened the door to get some
fresh air.  The smell of the Bay of Fundy was thick as the mist floated
inland from the shore.  If there were stars or a moon in the sky was a
mystery to Cameron.  The only light he could see was the misted glow of a
white halogen on the eave of the terminal and in the rearview mirror, the
brighter defined lights of the gas station.

Cameron thought about walking
the block to the gas station to see if there was anything to eat or
drink.  His coffee laden gut dissuaded him from getting out of the
car.  The decision to buy the black tarry elixir at their last stop had
come out of desperation and had begun to haunt him soon afterward.

If Cameron closed his eyes, and
breathed in deeply, the moisture in the mist alone would be enough to sedate
him.  Still something about being near the ocean exhilarated him, even as
tired as he was.

* * * * *

A marker for Kejimkujic National
Park broke the tree line.  The sign was the first road marker other than
the route eight signs that had intermittently popped up since turning off 101
in Clementine.

The ferry had landed in Digby an
hour ago and they were already in the heart of Nova Scotia.

“We are close,” said
Nicole.  She unclasped the necklace and removed the pendant from around
her neck.  The pendant’s dark emerald swallowed all of the light that hit
the gem’s dull surface, encapsulating in the emerald’s center as a muted green
fire.  Cameron watched as Nicole used her fingernails to pick at the seam
where the green gem joined the metal setting.

“I wanted to ask you about
that,” said Cameron.

“What did you want to ask?”
replied Nicole, as she spun the setting, trying to pry the metal scrolling at
the emerald’s edge from different angles.

“I was surprised that the
necklace was so significant to Marie.  I mean given that it is a physical
object and all.”

“This pendant is special
because…” with a snap Nicole twisted the large gem away from the antique
backing and held the now bare metal up to Cameron to show him what lie behind
the stone, “it is a key.”

Across Nicole’s palm, the
pendant was splayed open.  The emerald was still connected to the setting
by a hinge and on the back of the gem and the face of the ancient setting was
an image.  Engraved clearly and lightly in the metal of the setting’s face
was a diamond shaped diagram.  Above the diamond to the side was set a
tiny emerald chip.  A thin line ran from the center of the diamond to the
chip.  Another engraved line led out of the center of the diamond diagram
toward the large emerald, a deeper thicker line.

The Canadian highway atlas was
on the seat between Cameron and Nicole, still opened to the provincial map of
southern Nova Scotia.  She placed the pendant on the map and centered the
emerald on an island in the Medway River.  Nicole spun the setting to the
left until the line between the diamond and emerald chip were pointing at Bangs
Falls to the northwest.  Cameron could see that the second line, the
deeper thicker line, pointed toward the north side of Kejimkujic National Park,
right about what Cameron judged to be their current location.  Nicole
traced the lighter line from the center of the diamond toward the little
emerald chip at the edge and continued passed the pendant by making an
invisible line to a place on the map that satisfied her.

“It’s very close,” said Nicole,
“you will want to slow down.”

“You’re telling me that pendant
corresponds to our map?” asked Pepe.  He had watched Nicole place the
pendant on the map and use the makeshift device the same way Cameron and he
were trained to use lensatic compasses in the Legion, the difference was that
their military field compasses had magnetized needles.  Nicole’s decoder
did not have a way of telling true north that Pepe could see, and he did not
see how she knew her bearings without a the magnetized needle.

“It only needs to give me the
general direction.  I will know what it is I am looking for when I see
it,” said Nicole.

The corners of Pepe’s mouth
dropped to form an upside down smile.  Pepe realized that the scale of the
map, large or small, did not matter if whoever was decoding with the key knew
what they were looking for.  The pendant truly was a key, and a good one,
that could be used with any map that had the correct landmarks.

“There,” said Nicole.  She
pointed at a line on the map designating a two-track utility road.  “That
is where we need to turn.”

The road came up quickly as
Nicole predicted.  Though Cameron had been driving slowly he did not see
the two-track until the Chevy was upon the road.  There were no signs and
they drove past before braking.  The mouth to the two-track was overgrown
and could easily have been mistaken for an old logging trail.

Cameron stopped the Chevy,
backed up to the mouth of the two-track, and then turned off route eight onto
the overgrown utility road.

The Chevy plodded over the old
road for some time.  Regardless of how gently Cameron tried to maneuver,
the deep weather worn dips rolled their stomachs.  Sections of the
two-track were so crowded by brush and fallen branches that Cameron had to stop
several times so that he and Pepe could clear the path.  They continued at
a slow pace until, a far distance from route eight, the evergreens turned to
hardwoods, and the two-track became a groomed dirt road.

Cameron looked into the rearview
at Pepe.  Pepe shrugged in response.

They had drove for another
fifteen minutes when Pepe leaned forward between Nicole and Cameron.  “In
the trees,” said Pepe.  He pointed to the tree line to the left of the
Chevy.  Cameron slowed to a crawl so that he could peer into the
woods.  Behind the tree line, visible in some places, hidden in others, a
wooden split rail fence ran parallel with the road.  From what they could
see, the fence was an amalgam of new and aged rails ranging from barn-wood
black and grey to fresh-cut blonde.  Many of the posts had fresh dirt
mounds near their base no more than a few winters old.  For being in the
middle of the forest, the fence was very well maintained.

Not much farther past where Pepe
first saw glimpses of the split rail fence, the Chevy came to a lane that
veered up a slight grade toward an opening in the trees.  At the top of
the grade stood a tall wrought iron gate, blocking the entrance to a clearing
behind.  The gate and the two tall supporting stone pillars were out of
place between the split rail fences that squeezed the portal on either side.

“Something’s back here,” said
Cameron.

* * *
* *

Nova Scotia

 “We are here,” said
Nicole.  “Please stop the car.”

Cameron did as Nicole requested
and stopped the Chevy in the middle of the road.  Nicole stepped out of
the Chevy before Cameron had even switched off the ignition.  She walked
around the front of the Chevy toward the gate.  Cameron got out and joined
Nicole.  The two stood silently between the Chevy and the gate.

Pepe shifted across the backseat
toward his door.  Pepe wanted to join Cameron and Nicole outside of the
Chevy.  He stopped when he saw a young man in a canvas jacket come out of
the trees, rifle tucked under his arm, steps ahead of where the Chevy had
stopped.  The man was dressed like a hunter.  Pepe thought there was
something odd about the man and decided to stay where he was.  As the
hunter stepped onto the road, another young man wearing the same type of canvas
jacket came out from the trees across the road from the first.  The second
man had a rifle tucked under his arm as well.  The two hunters paired up
in front of the Chevy and then wordlessly approached Cameron and Nicole.

Without moving his upper body,
Pepe pulled the mosquito from under his shirt.

Nicole turned to the men as they
closed in and lightly bowed her head, the hunters responded in kind. 
Nicole said to Cameron, “These men are my friends.  They will watch over
me.”

“Hello,” said Cameron.  He
tapped his pant leg with the tips of his fingers.  Pepe recognized the
subtle gesture.  The finger tap was a signal to lower the mosquito that
Cameron knew was just out of sight.  The two hunters did not verbally
respond to Cameron, choosing to offer the same slight bow they had exchanged
with Nicole instead.  Cameron nodded back.  When Cameron’s head was
bowed he noticed that the hunters were each wearing an emerald ring in the same
style as Nicole’s pendant, except their rings also had a symbol on them that
Cameron recognized.  Cameron had seen the familiar symbol for the first
time only a few days before and now understood the significance.  The
emerald green tiepins worn by the bodyguards in the library of Le Dragon Vert
were embossed with the same small design.

The young hunters turned toward
the gate in unison, walked over, and then stopped to wait for Nicole.

Nicole faced Cameron, “I cannot
thank you enough Mister Kincaid.  You are bon homme, a good man,” Nicole
glanced at Pepe sitting in the back seat, “so is Mister Pepe.”  Nicole
smiled at Pepe and he responded with a quick wink and a nod.  She turned
back to Cameron, “You should live your life purer, but do not worry too much if
you cannot.  You will have a better chance in your next life, without the
hardships that you have had to endure in this one.”

“I will do my best,” said
Cameron.  He wondered if Nicole somehow knew something about his past and
then let the thought pass.  “You try to stay out of trouble yourself.”

“Au Revoir, Mister Kincaid,”
said Nicole.  She walked toward the gate to join the two young men. 
As she approached the hunters, one of them opened a small panel on the stone
pillar revealing a numeric keypad.  The hunter tapped in a code and a buzz
came from the panel followed by metallic thud inside the gate.  The other
hunter pushed the heavy wrought iron door open.

Nicole stepped behind the gate
and then turned back toward Cameron and Pepe and gave a gentle wave.  She
waited there and watched the two men return to the Chevy, turn the car around,
and start back toward route eight.

Cameron did not look into the
rearview mirror as he drove back down the dirt road.  There was no real
reason to look back.  Cameron knew that the gate would disappear from view
as quickly as had found the mysterious portal.  Whatever was hidden behind
those iron doors was hidden well.  Cameron had promised that he would get
Nicole to safety and he was satisfied that she would be safe with this order of
men living out in the woods.  Nicole was a treasure after all.

* * *
* *

Nova Scotia Tuesday 1330 hours

Cameron and Pepe stopped to fuel
up in Clementine, before turning onto 101.  Pepe stood at the old gas pump
outside of Cameron’s window watching the numbers roll by as he filled the Chevy
with gas.

Cameron took his cell phone off
the seat and tapped the power on.  Nothing happened, he had nursed the
cell phone battery as far as possible.  Cameron rolled down the window and
waved the cell phone in front of Pepe.  “This thing is dead.  Any
juice left in yours?”