The Pilgrim Conspiracy

by Jeroen Windmeijer

  He sat on the sofa to read for a while before he went to the police station with Mark.

  Now that the euphoria was subsiding, Peter began to feel guilty for making such a big decision without asking Fay.

  Perhaps I have been a bit too impulsive, he thought.

  Chapter 18

  Mark responded enthusiastically to the news that Peter had just booked a flight to Boston so that he could visit Judith.

  ‘That’s really great, Peter,’ he said.

  As they were cycling to the police station on the Langegracht, Mark put his hand on Peter’s arm and left it there for a moment.

  ‘This is going to make her feel so much less alone there. And your visit might overlap with mine. Send me your flight details later. I can’t actually remember exactly when I’m going over there.’

  ‘I will,’ Peter said. ‘I think she’ll be on her own for three weeks, then I’ll be there for three weeks, and then you’ll be there for three weeks, and then she’ll have three more weeks on her own.’

  ‘Perfect.’

  Mark took his hand off Peter’s arm.

  Peter spent the rest of their journey telling Mark about the manuscript Piet van Vliet had found, giving him a broad outline of the fragments he had read.

  They parked their bikes in the racks outside the station. Inside, they reported at the front desk where Chief Inspector Rijsbergen came to meet them.

  He seemed taken aback when he saw Peter.

  ‘Mark is a good friend of mine,’ Peter said. ‘He asked me to come with him. I know a bit about the subject too.’

  ‘And two heads are better than one,’ said Mark.

  Rijsbergen appeared to hesitate for a moment, but then he asked them both to follow him.

  ‘There are two things that I’d like to show you,’ Rijsbergen said as soon as they were all inside his office. ‘The first concerns a letter that we found in the inside pocket of Coen Zoutman’s jacket. It’s not a letter as such … It’s stories from the Old Testament that he’s written out by hand and added some commentary to. We’d very much like to know why Meneer Zoutman chose these stories in particular and why he had them on his person. That second question is more difficult to answer, but I think you might be able to help me with the first.’

  ‘And the second thing?’

  ‘That’s more …’

  Rijsbergen produced a file and took out the photographs of the tattoo. He gave them to his visitors.

  ‘The pathologist found this tattoo on Coen Zoutman’s body, positioned between the left breast and the armpit.’

  Peter and Mark studied the images, turning them around and holding them in various positions.

  ‘It goes without saying that we’ll be circulating this image among the Freemasons.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’ve never seen this before,’ Mark admitted. ‘The triangle itself is an ancient symbol. In Christianity, it represents the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. It can be a symbol for femininity as well because of … well, I think it’s clear why. But used in this combination?’

  ‘It looks like two triangles,’ Rijsbergen speculated. ‘Or two mountains? Two pyramids?’

  ‘And that little circle could be a sun?’ Peter suggested.

  ‘Or the circle denotes a place?’ Mark chimed in.

  ‘There’s an image of the All-Seeing Eye in the Masonic temple. Could it be that?’ Rijsbergen thought out loud.

  He quickly typed something into his computer. When he had found what he was looking for, he turned the screen around towards Peter and Mark.

  ‘That could be it, I suppose,’ Mark said absently, holding the photo so that the triangle pointed upwards. ‘But if it is, then I don’t know what that smaller triangle is supposed to be.’

  Rijsbergen showed them Coen Zoutman’s business card.

  Mark and Peter also noticed that the image on the card was similar to the tattoo and the line drawing of the All-Seeing Eye, but they weren’t convinced.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Mark said. ‘I can’t help you. What I can do is post the image on a forum about symbols and cryptology. Not this photograph, obviously, but a good drawing of it. It might give you something. Members often post requests about this sort of thing. It’s worth a shot.’

  ‘I’d appreciate that,’ Rijsbergen said. ‘Feel free to make a sketch of it to take home with you.’

  ‘And the letter?’ Peter asked.

  ‘I have that here,’ said Rijsbergen. ‘It’s a lot of text, but I’m sure you’ll recognise the stories, so you’ll be able to read it faster than I could.’

  Mark took the sheets of paper from him and read the first few words aloud.

  Do you still not perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes, and fail to see? Do you have ears, and fail to hear?

  MARK 8:17–18

  ‘These are the words that Jesus spoke to his disciples,’ Mark explained. ‘After the miracle where Jesus fed four thousand people with seven loaves and two fish. When they’d all eaten their fill, the disciples gathered up the leftover pieces of bread. It was enough to fill seven baskets. Afterwards, Jesus and his disciples got into a boat. But the disciples had only brought one loaf of bread with them, and when Jesus realised this, he said: “Why are you talking about having no bread?” Then Jesus speaks the famous words that Meneer Zoutman has chosen as a sort of epigraph for his letter.’

  ‘And why would he …’ Rijsbergen began to ask.

  ‘It looks like he wants to tell people something that he considers to be self-evident, but most people are blind to. They have eyes but cannot see.’

  Mark quickly read the first page and passed it to Peter.

  The room fell silent.

  Exodus: The story in a nutshell

  1

  Everything begins with Abraham.

  Commanded by a God unknown to him, Abram, as he was called then, was instructed to take his family and leave Haran, a town that today lies a little over forty kilometres from Şanlıurfa, a small town in the southeast of Turkey. Previously, his father, Terah, had left Chaldean Ur in what is now the southeast of Iraq, to live in Canaan, now the West Bank. They had never been beyond Haran before.

  God promised Abram that He would make him the father of a great people and that He would give him the land of Canaan – to this day, this promise underpins the claims made by Jewish settlers about their right to build settlements on Palestinian territory.

  It soon seemed that the promise of many offspring – ‘I will indeed bless you, and I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore’ – would come to nothing because of his wife Sarai’s infertility. But one day God Himself visited Abram in the company of two angels. Sarai, which means ‘royal’, was now to be called Sarah, ‘princess’, and Abram was now called Abraham. The added letter, ‘Hee’, symbolised God’s grace. Sarah baked bread for God and His heavenly companions, which they consumed with great relish.

  God repeated his promise that He would give countless offspring to Abraham and ninety-year-old Sarah, who, understandably, laughed when she heard this. In the meantime, at Sarah’s insistence, Abraham had taken a concubine, Hagar. She had a child, Ishmael, but this became a problem when Abraham and Sarah did indeed have their own child, Isaac, just as God had promised. They decided to send Hagar and Ishmael away into the wilderness. Miraculously, they survived, and according to tradition, Ishmael became the father of the Islamic peoples. God then told Abraham to sacrifice his only son Isaac on a mountain in the land of Moriah. He followed this command and set off with his son. After three days of travelling, he took the bundle of wood they had brought with them and tied his son to it. Just as he was about to cut his son’s throat, they heard the bleating of a ram whose horns had become caught in a thorn bush. Instead of his son, Abraham sacrificed the ram – the Muslims celebrate this miracle every year at Eid al-Adha, the Festival of Sacrifice. For Christians, this story foreshadows the story of Jesus, God’s only
son, who is sacrificed by his Heavenly Father.

  Imagine Abraham and Isaac on their journey back home. How would the son have looked at his father?

  2

  Isaac, in turn, had two sons: Esau and Jacob. Jacob cheated Esau of his birthright in exchange for a plate of lentils. Jacob took several wives and had twelve sons. One of them was Joseph, the apple of his eye, who had been born to his favourite wife, Rachel. Joseph possessed the gift of prophecy and the ability to interpret dreams. His eleven brothers were so jealous of Joseph’s position as the favourite son that they sold him to passing merchants who then sold him on to Potiphar, a high-ranking servant of the pharaoh. Joseph quickly rose to great power. He interpreted the pharaoh’s dream about seven skinny cows eating seven fat cows, predicting that seven years of abundance would be followed by seven years of famine and that the land’s good harvests should be stored. As a reward, the pharaoh made him vizier of Egypt. His eleven brothers and their father Jacob were not so fortunate. Because of the famine, Joseph’s brothers went to Egypt to beg for food at the court, not knowing that when they grovelled in the dust before the throne, the man sitting upon it was Joseph. To their shame, they eventually recognised him as the brother they had sold.

  And this, according to the Bible, is how the people of Israel came to be in Egypt. After many years, the pharaoh, who had been so kind to them, died and memories of Joseph faded. The Hebrews, as they were called then, became slaves, forced to work in the mercilessly hot sun, making bricks of clay for the construction of Egyptian cities. Because the Hebrews were growing in number, the pharaoh ordered all their new-born boys to be killed. The baby Moses escaped certain death when his mother put him into the Nile in a bulrush basket sealed with tar. He was found by an Egyptian princess and brought up as a prince at court. Not until he was forty years old did he discover that he belonged to the enslaved people. One day he killed an Egyptian overseer who had mistreated a Hebrew slave. Moses fled to a place in the desert called Midian, where he was taken in by the shepherd Jethro and his family. Moses married Jethro’s daughter Zipporah, with whom he had two sons: Eliezer, ‘God is my helper’, and Gershom, ‘stranger’. Moses explained his choice of the name Gershom with the words: ‘I have been a stranger in a strange land.’

  After exactly forty years – he was eighty by then, and a shepherd – while out with his flock one day, he saw a bush that was burning yet not consumed by flames. From within the fire, the voice of God spoke to Moses for the first time, calling Himself ‘I am who I am’. He told Moses to lead ‘His’ people out of Egypt.

  Moses returned to Egypt, but ten times, the pharaoh refused to let the Hebrews go. Ten plagues came upon Egypt: water turned into blood; frogs infested the land; lice tormented both animals and humans; a swarm of flies drove people to madness; a plague broke out among the livestock; boils covered the skins of the Egyptians; a storm of hail and fire destroyed the harvest; locusts covered the whole land; there was darkness for three days, and finally, the first-born son in every family died. Each time, the Hebrews were spared. Before the last plague, they smeared their doorposts with the blood of a slaughtered lamb so that the Angel of Death knew to pass over that home.

  When his own first-born son died, the pharaoh realised that he could not win. He allowed the Hebrews to leave. According to the Bible, there were six hundred thousand men, not including the women, children and slaves.

  But soon the pharaoh regretted his decision and sent his army to recapture them.

  Moses and the Hebrews had now arrived at the Red Sea and were trapped by the water on one side and the approaching army on the other. Upon God’s command, Moses held his staff over the sea, and the waters parted. The Hebrews were able to walk across the bottom of the sea, but when the Egyptians tried to follow them, the waters closed again, and the pharaoh and his soldiers drowned.

  3

  Having barely escaped the murderous clutches of the Egyptians, the Hebrews began to complain about the lack of food and water. On God’s command, Moses threw a piece of wood into a spring of bitter water, and the water instantly became sweet and drinkable. Manna fell from the sky every morning and stayed on the ground after the morning dew had evaporated. It looked like coriander seeds, but it was white and tasted like honey cake. It had to be collected immediately and eaten the same day because, the next day, the manna would be rotten and full of worms. On the day before the Sabbath, a double portion could be gathered – which would not spoil – because there would be no fresh manna on the Sabbath. The word manna literally means ‘What is that?’ This was what the Hebrews said when they saw the food for the first time. Large numbers of quails also fell from the sky for them to eat.

  When the Hebrews arrived at Mount Sinai, God finally showed Himself to His people. They were afraid and asked Moses to relay God’s messages for them. Moses went up the mountain and stayed there for forty days and forty nights without eating or drinking. God gave him the Ten Commandments on two stone tablets, along with many other laws by which the Hebrews were to live. God promised Moses that He would help them remove the Canaanites from the Promised Land. He also gave precise instructions for the construction of a tabernacle, a portable tent that served as a place of worship for the Hebrews and a symbol of God’s presence in their midst.

  When he came back down the mountain, Moses discovered that, under the leadership of his brother Aaron, the people had made a golden calf by melting down all of their gold jewellery so that they would have a visible god to worship. Furious, Moses smashed the stone tablets, ordered the execution of three thousand people, and went back up the mountain where he spent another forty days without eating or drinking. He received the Ten Commandments for a second time. When he left the mountain, the Hebrews made the tabernacle and the Ark of the Covenant, a wooden chest containing the stone tablets that was carried on two poles. God’s presence dwelled in the Ark of the Covenant, and He would appear to His people in the form of a cloud. Wherever the cloud stood still, the Hebrews would stop and make camp. If the cloud carried on moving, the people would follow it.

  And so Moses led them to the border of the Promised Land. Because of his own sin – he had struck a rock three times with a rod to make water appear when God had told him to strike it only once – Moses was able to see the Promised Land but not enter it. The Hebrews were punished for their sins by being made to stay in the desert for a total of forty years. They set up their tents opposite the city of Jericho on the banks of the river Jordan.

  Moses died at the age of one hundred and twenty. He was buried by God Himself, with His own hands, in a place that is known to no one.

  4

  When the Hebrews finally entered the Promised Land under the leadership of Moses’ successor Joshua, they slaughtered many, many tens of thousands of people whose only crime was that they already lived in the land that had been promised to the Hebrews. If we add up the deaths mentioned in the Bible, we arrive at a total of at least six hundred thousand people, all killed in the conquest of the Promised Land.

  I will end with three stories.

  Numbers 31:7–18

  Revenge on the Midianites and division of the spoils

  They (the Hebrews) did battle against Midian, as the Lord had commanded Moses, and killed every male. They killed the kings of Midian: Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur, and Reba, the five kings of Midian, in addition to others who were slain by them; and they also killed Balaam son of Beor with the sword. The Hebrews took the women of Midian and their little ones captive; and they took all their cattle, their flocks, and all their goods as booty. All their towns where they had settled, and all their encampments, they burned, but they took all the spoil and all the booty, both people and animals. Then they brought the captives and the booty and the spoil to Moses, to Eleazar the priest, and to the congregation of the Hebrews, at the camp on the plains of Moab by the Jordan at Jericho.

  Moses, Eleazar the priest, and all the leaders of the congregation went to meet them outside the camp. Moses became ang
ry with the officers of the army, the commanders of thousands and the commanders of hundreds, who had come from service in the war. Moses said to them, ‘Have you allowed all the women to live? These women here, on Balaam’s advice, made the Hebrews act treacherously against the Lord in the affair of Peor, so that the plague came among the congregation of the Lord. Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known a man by sleeping with him. But all the young girls who have not known a man by sleeping with him, keep alive for yourselves.’

  Deuteronomy 7: 1–3; 12; 16; 21–24

  Dealing with other nations

  When the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are about to enter and occupy, and He clears away many nations before you – the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations mightier and more numerous than you – and when the Lord your God gives them over to you and you defeat them, then you must utterly destroy them. Make no covenant with them and show them no mercy. Do not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons …

  If you heed these ordinances, by diligently observing them, the Lord your God will maintain with you the covenant loyalty that He swore to your ancestors … You shall devour all the peoples that the Lord your God is giving over to you, showing them no pity; you shall not serve their gods, for that would be a snare to you … Have no dread of them, for the Lord your God, who is present with you, is a great and awesome God. The Lord your God will clear away these nations before you little by little; you will not be able to make a quick end of them, otherwise the wild animals would become too numerous for you. But the Lord your God will give them over to you, and throw them into great panic, until they are destroyed. He will hand their kings over to you, and you shall blot out their name from under heaven; no one will be able to stand against you, until you have destroyed them.