The Templar's Code (53 page)

Reaching the vestibule, he came to an abrupt halt, his heart slamming against his rib cage.

The door to the ladies’ loo was ajar.

With no thought to propriety, he charged through the doorway. And promptly started to cough, gagging on the cloying perfume that permeated the diminutive space. A femme fatale had recently doused herself.

Christ! Where is Edie?
At a glance, he could see that the lavatory was empty.

Spinning on his heel, he charged across the hall to the gents.

It, too, was vacant.

Standing in the middle of the vestibule, he turned full circle. Which is when he saw a phosphorescent red glow out of the corner of his eye. A sign at the far end of the hallway marking an emergency exit. He ran down the hall and forcefully shoved both hands against the panic bar.

On the other side of the exit was a deserted alley that reeked of urine, stale perspiration, and a dead animal carcass. No time to take stock, he ran toward the nearest street, that being Edie’s most likely avenue of escape.

Assuming, of course, that she even exited the building. The bastard could have had an accomplice who—

An opportunity to escape had presented itself and she seized it. Edie Miller was, if anything, resourceful.

Emerging from the alley, breathless, he came to a full stop, caught in the bright beam of an automobile’s headlight. The auto careened to a screeching halt, the back end wildly fishtailing. The next instant, the passenger door flew open.

Edie leaned across the gear shift. “Get in!”

“All is lost!”

“Do not give up hope,” Mercurius beseeched, trying to calm his distraught
amoretto.
“We have come far together. Be strong, Saviour. Much is at stake.”

“But the
archimalakas
has the relic!”

“I know. . . . Let me think.”

Though he did not know it at the time, being only five years of age, Osman and Moshe had entrusted him with a momentous responsibility—to bring the great work that they began to fruition. To fulfill their vision and liberate the anguished masses from this hideously flawed creation. This godless earth where we are daily force-fed the hypocrisy that misery is a blessing in disguise and suffering an ordeal that must be endured in order to enter the kingdom of God. Not even Moses dared to pass that canard off as “truth.”

The Light
did
work in mysterious ways, man unable to fathom cause and effect until after the fact. More than forty years ago, in Amman, Jordan, he’d uncovered a single word embedded in the text of the Copper Scroll.
Akhenaton.
That single, startling word implied a connection, however tenuous, between the Hebrews of the Old Testament and ancient Egypt. Frightened by an anonymous act of vandalism, he’d never published his findings. Instead, he cowered in silence.

But when the Greek crone unceremoniously thrust a loose-leaf manuscript at him seven years ago, Mercurius had been given an unbelievable gift. One bequeathed to him in 1943. The
true
history of the Hebrew tribes and their connection to the pharaoh Akhenaton.

Within days of that miraculous encounter at his childhood home, he’d been given yet another gift—the beautiful young man, Saviour Panos. Firmly grounded in the material world, his
amoretto
was the dark to his light. Together, they made a perfect whole. Old and young. Cerebral and visceral. Eromenos and erastes.

The two of them would give a great gift to a world at war with itself. A gift that had the power to engender a spiritual awakening of mankind’s collective soul. A gift that would bind up all the wounds. A way to usher the victimized inhabitants of this planet to the Lost Heaven. The only true utopia. Paradise regained.

He was the Bringer of the Light. It was his sacred duty to see that it happened.

But he
had
to acquire the Emerald Tablet. Without it, the
Luminarium
was just empty words. In the same way that the Emerald Tablet was worthless without the encryption key contained in the pages of the
Luminarium.

Cause and effect.

Now was not the time to cower in silence. For evil
is
birthed in silence. How many stood silent while Osman and Moshe were led to the waiting train? A scene repeated thousands of times across the whole of Europe.

Now was the time for action.

He’d vowed that no man would
ever
profit from the Emerald Tablet. Clearly, the Brit intended to do just that. To sell it to the highest bidder.
Why else would Caedmon Aisquith have gone to such lengths to find the sacred relic?
And now that he’d unearthed the sacred relic, what lengths would he—

Yes! Of course!
The path was so clear . . . so brilliantly illuminated.

Excited, Mercurius tightly clutched the phone. He would atone for his sins after the Emerald Tablet had been retrieved.

“
Amoretto,
you must listen
very
carefully. There is a way to retrieve the sacred relic.”

A deadly way, to be certain. But with so much at stake, he refused to stand silent.

Exhausted, Edie gracelessly plopped into one of the upholstered Louis VI chairs scattered about the hotel lobby. The events of the last hour had unraveled at breakneck speed.

Which was about how fast she drove down Fourteenth Street, flooring it through two red lights to get to the Willard Hotel. The marble-columned, overly plush lobby had “safety” written all over it. How could any harm come to a person in this magnificent old-world edifice? The stalwart doorman would keep the bogeyman at bay.

She glanced over her shoulder; Caedmon was still at the concierge desk on the other side of the lobby. No sooner had they pushed through the revolving door than he’d trotted off, keen to check the metal case into the hotel vault.

Self-conscious of the fact that she was underdressed for the upscale lobby—decked out in a wrinkled peacoat and stained jeans—Edie smoothed a hand over her tangled curls.
I probably look like one of those big-haired women in a Gustav Klimt painting
. Caedmon was equally disheveled, but speaking the Queen’s English meant that he could get away with it, Americans enamored with well-spoken Brits.

At the moment, she was far from enamored.

Hearing the melodic strains of a Chopin sonata, she peered behind the columned promenade adjacent to the lobby. A tuxedoed pianist was finessing the ivory. An image flashed across her mind’s eye.
Rubin Woolf, decked out in his smoking jacket, seated at a white baby grand playing
—

“Would you care for something to drink?”

Startled, Edie jerked her head. A pleasant-faced cocktail waiter, holding an empty tray, stood beside her.

“Sorry, I, um, didn’t see you,” she sputtered. “A drink? Yes. Perfect. Although I’m drawing a big blank.” She self-consciously laughed. Not only did she look like a bag lady, she was starting to sound like one.

“May I suggest a Silver Bullet? It’s a martini with—”

“No martinis!”

The waiter contemplatively tapped a finger against his chin. “You strike me as the champagne Kir Royale type.”

“Sounds wonderful. Make it two, please. Someone will be joining me.”

A few moments later, Caedmon approached. “I say, posh accommodations,” he wryly remarked, seating himself in the Louis VI chair opposite her. He ran a hand over his jaw. “Although that shave at C’est Bleu was so close, I damned near nicked myself.”

“It could have been worse—you could have had a dagger thrown at your back,” she snapped, annoyed by his facetious remark.

Caedmon lowered his hand. Head cocked to the side, he frowned. “Considering that we escaped unscathed, you’re uncharacteristically taciturn.”

Taciturn?
Try terrified.

The waiter returned, setting two champagne flutes on the table. Flipping his empty tray, he unobtrusively took his leave. Caedmon raised a questioning brow.

“Champagne Kir Royale.” She shrugged. “I needed a pick-me-up.”

“The French monks who created crème de cassis thought it a curative for wretchedness.”

Edie raised her flute in mock salute. “Bring on the crème de cassis. I’ve had all the wretchedness I can handle for one day. And speaking of which, we absolutely
cannot
go public with the Emerald Tablet,” she blurted, deciding to lay all her cards on the table. “If the secret of creation
is
contained within the ancient pictograph that’s inlaid on the tablet, the ramifications are mind-boggling.”

“No need to worry. I wasn’t planning on running off half-cocked.” One side of his mouth twitched. “At least not until we know what we’re dealing with.”

“Is that why you asked Professor Lyon to translate the tablet? So you’ll know what you’re dealing with. Or are you planning to perform a little alchemical mojo, see if you can replicate the Big Bang theory of creation?”

An annoyed expression flashed across his face. “I am convinced that the Emerald Tablet was the reason behind the Templars’ demise.”

“Okay, fine,” she muttered, readily conceding the point. “Isn’t it enough to know that the Emerald Tablet is real, that it does actually exist? Earlier today, we made a horrible mistake. We should
never
have dug it up. But it’s not too late. We can return it to—”

“I
can
not and I
will
not,” Caedmon interjected, jaw tightly set, blue eyes glittering.

“Our having custody of the Emerald Tablet is wrong on so many levels, I don’t even know where to begin. No, wait! How about starting with the dead man at Chow Hounds? Who, by the way, was an innocent bystander.”

“Yes, Jesus wept. Unfortunately, blood and treasure go hand in hand. Better the corpulent bystander than one of us.”

Edie gripped the stem of her champagne flute, on the verge of slinging the contents in his face.

“Christ! Did I just say that?” Wearing a stunned expression, Caedmon shook his head. Dr. Jekyll regaining his sanity. “Forgive me. But the fact of the matter still remains: The Emerald Tablet is a discovery of the first magnitude. Now that our grave concerns about the relic falling into the hands of a terrorist have been doused, there’s no reason why—”

“Listen to you! What are you going to do? Haul it back to Oxford so you can wave it in the face of all those dons at Queen’s College who dissed your dissertation? Because I’m beginning to think that’s what this deadly scavenger hunt was all about, redeeming your academic reputation. You’d love nothing more than to rub the Oxford crowd’s face in it. ‘See, I was right all along!’”

“Nothing so crass, I can assure you. And you know full well why I went to such lengths to find the relic. The horrific fate of Atlantis was never far from my mind.”

“But you do seek vindication,” she pressed.

Long moments passed, the drawn-out silence instilling a weighty sense of consequence to the unanswered accusation.

“For nearly fourteen years I’ve had to live with the disgrace of being shown the door,” he said after a lengthy pause. “Don’t you understand, Edie, the Emerald Tablet is
the link
between ancient Egypt and the Knights Templar. I’ve waited my entire adult life for such a discovery. So, to answer your question,
yes,
I seek vindication.”

The admission gave Edie no satisfaction. “How can you put your personal vanity and ambition above the concerns of mankind?”

Caedmon threw his hands up. “Ah! So now I’m Atlas, forced to bear the weight of the world on my shoulders. I’ve put too much blood, sweat, toil, and tears into this venture to back away from it.”