“The problem is that so many tribes, especially those in the Northeast, were wiped out so any records or memories would have been lost with them.”
She nodded. “So that brings us to our boy van Eyck. What else did we learn about him that might be a clue?” Amanda knew Cam had spent part of the day researching him.
“First of all, to be clear, it’s Jan van Eyck we care about. He was the younger brother. Hubert worked with him on planning the Ghent Altarpiece, but he died six years before it was finished. So it would have been Jan who embedded any clues to the Holy Grail. The interesting thing I learned about Jan is that his patron was the Duke of Burgundy.” Cam smiled. “It took me a while to figure out the Duke of Burgundy was actually a king, and an important one at that. He ruled in an area we know today as northern France, Belgium and the Netherlands. I don’t know why you Europeans have to make things so confusing by calling him a duke instead of a king.”
“This from a man who’s a big football fan. You Yanks named a game after your foot, and then hardly anyone ever kicks the bloody ball.”
He grinned. “You can mock me, but I’ll thank you not to mock American football.” He took her hand. “Anyway, the Duke of Burgundy was the godfather of one of van Eyck’s kids. More to the point, he was big into the ancient mysteries, especially alchemy. He had the stories of Chretien de Troyes, who wrote the earliest Holy Grail quest stories, translated so he and his circle could study them. He even created his own secret order called the Order of the Golden Fleece and modeled it after the Templars.”
“Interesting. Maybe he was the one who got van Eyck interested in the Holy Grail.”
Cam nodded. “Take it one step further. Maybe he even knew where it was hidden. Like I said, he was the most powerful man in Europe. And the wealthiest. And he was a patron of the arts. And obsessed with the Holy Grail.” Cam lifted his beer. “Connect the dots. Whatever information van Eyck had about the Holy Grail, he probably got from the Duke of Burgundy.”
Eventually the Samhain celebration morphed into a group meal, the smell of bratwurst and beef stew filling the night air. Still unnerved by her communion with Opa, Katarina hung around until the last of the celebrants had packed up, extinguished the fires, and said their goodbyes to the spirits of the dead for another year. As midnight approached, she felt restless still. The base need for human companionship called.
Instead of heading back to Boston, she took the highway north, toward Manchester, New Hampshire. An old mill city of about 100,000 people, the urban center was large enough to offer Katarina exactly what she needed: A dozen bars to choose from, and the anonymity to do as she pleased.
Using the search function on her phone, she found a nightclub in the downtown area, backed her BMW into a metered space on the main drag, and kicked off her hiking boots and replaced them with flats. She pulled a travel bottle of mouthwash from the glove box and rinsed the taste of bratwurst from her mouth; with a napkin she rubbed her teeth clean. Fluffing her hair again, she checked her reflection in a storefront window—jeans and a cashmere vest over a silk blouse. Nothing fancy. But she didn’t suffer from false modesty. Even in plain clothes and smelling of campfire, she knew she would turn heads.
She strode in, slid onto an empty stool at the corner of the bar, and ordered a sidecar. “Two parts cognac, one part each orange liqueur and lemon juice, no ice,” she explained to the bartender. “And make it German cognac.” The drink had been popular in Nazi Germany, and the alcohol warmed her, settled her. Exhaling, she scanned the room. The Friday night post-work crowd had devolved into a later, drunker, edgier group of players and hustlers. She took another sip and waited. She knew it wouldn’t be long.
Five minutes later a brown-haired man in an expensive suit ambled over, a twinkle in his eye. She knew the type—slick, overconfident, probably a successful salesman of some kind. She preferred blonds, but he was attractive in a runway model kind of way with his November tan and moussed hair and perfectly-folded pocket square. “Pardon me,” he said, leaning past her at the bar, his musty cologne wafting over her.
She met his eye. “Of course.”
He ordered a single malt scotch, something off the top shelf she had never heard of. “Can I get you something?” he asked, eyeing her half-empty cocktail glass.
“From the bar?”
He smiled down at her, his teeth an unnatural shade of white. “I can be resourceful in a pinch. What else did you have in mind?”
She lifted her drink to his. Not a bad repartee. And the good thing about players like this was that they knew their way around a woman’s body. “I could use a laugh or two.”
He rested his elbow on the bar. “Tough day?” His dark eyes held hers and widened slightly, as if he really cared.
“Trying to figure out some family stuff. Parents, grandparents.”
“I heard a line once: It doesn’t matter what your parents were. It matters what you remember them to be.”
She nodded. He was pretty good at this small-talk stuff. “In my case, it’s more that I’m trying to live up to them.”
“So, what do you do?” He angled his head and smiled. “When not trying to live up to your parents, that is.”
She looked him in the eye. “Eugenics.” In a way, it was true. And the great thing about a bar pickup was that it really didn’t matter what you said.
He seemed flustered for a split second, but quickly recovered. “If I remember correctly, doesn’t eugenics make the case for greater sexual activity among people with superior genetic makeup?”
She gulped her drink. “Not exactly.” As she spun off her barstool, she took him by the elbow. “But close enough.”
After his phone call with Cam Thorne, Bruce spent a couple of hours trying to push the anger aside, to get past the loss of his finger. To heal. Dressed in his hospital gown and wheeling his IV pole alongside, he wandered the halls of the small hospital, peering in at fellow patients. A teenager in traction. A woman with a breathing tube. An elderly man surrounded by his family exchanging final farewells. Bruce had lost a finger. A pinky, at that. No cancer, no stroke, no paralysis, no neurological disease. A pinky. Deal with it.
Returning to his room, he tentatively pulled back the bandage. A bloody, oozing stump held together by a few folds of stretched skin tied into place like the end of a sausage. One-third of the finger gone. An ugly wound which would heal; a minor deformity which would not. He took a few minutes to examine it, front and back, to let his eyes get used to it the way his tongue took a few hours to get used to a missing tooth when he was a kid. If Shelby were here, she’d probably try to lighten his mood by suggesting that the Finger Fairy would leave him a dollar under his pillow. The thought actually cheered him a bit.
He buzzed the nurse and asked her to rewrap his wound and then, with a clearer head, phoned the airline. He changed his flight home from an Amsterdam departure to Brussels. And he tracked down his original driver. “I never paid you,” he said.
The man stammered a response. “The men … They forced me to leave.”
“I understand. But I am in need of your services again.”
“Now?” It was well past midnight.
“I am at the hospital in Emmen. I need you to drive me to Belgium. To Ghent. Tonight.”
“That is a long trip.”
Bruce had already Googled it. “Three hundred and fifty kilometers. Less than four hours. There is something I need to see.” Plus it got him out of Emmen, where Menachem and his men could return at any time. “I will pay you a thousand Euros, plus what I owe you from today.”
The driver sucked in some air. “This time you pay up front.”
“Half up front, half when we arrive.”
“Deal. I will pick you up in half an hour.”
Twenty minutes later, Bruce pulled out his IV, slipped into the bathroom, dressed, and strode out of the hospital without being seen.
The SUV pulled up shortly after. The driver opened his window and held out his hand
. “Five hundred Euros.” Hiding his left hand, Bruce handed over the wad and jumped into the back. His overnight bag was still there. The driver spoke before driving. “Not many men get away from the Mossad.”
“How do you know that’s who it was?”
“I grew up in Jordan.” He spat. “I can smell them.”
“Well, here I am.”
The driver eyed him in the rearview mirror, sighed, and shifted into drive. Bruce tried to nod off, but the throbbing in his finger, coupled with the trauma of the attack, conspired against any chance at sleep. It was just as well. He had some thinking to do.
Three hours later they crossed into eastern Belgium. Bruce had been doing some reading during the trip and revised his plans. “When you get to Antwerp, take the northern highway to Bruges.” They were making good time; might as well not waste it. “I want to make a detour.”
The driver shrugged. “Another two hundred Euros.” Bruce nodded. “But what can you see at night?”
Bruce didn’t answer. Sometimes it was not what one saw, but what one felt. Jan van Eyck lived the last ten years of his life in Bruges. If Bruce were going to understand the man and his motivations, he needed to understand what influenced him.
After winding their way through a labyrinth of streets and crossing a dozen bridges spanning a spider’s web of canals, they finally pulled into the massive medieval town square just as the city began to flicker to life. At the center of the square stood Bruges’ famous bell tower. In medieval times the bells regulated the daily routine of the town’s citizens—when to work, when to pray, when to eat. Over the centuries the tower had suffered frequent damaging lightning strikes and other calamities, a history reflected in the poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The Belfry of Bruges.” From a place deep in his memory, from an innocent time when the worlds of art and literature were just opening to him and a high school teacher challenged him to memorize a new poem every week, the verses came back to Bruce:
In the marketplace of Bruges stands the belfry old and brown;
Thrice consumed and thrice rebuilded, still it watches o’er the town.
He stared at the tower, framed against the gray-blue pre-dawn sky, then allowed his eyes to take in the surrounding buildings. Unlike most European cities, Bruges’ medieval architecture and crisscrossing canals remained largely intact despite two world wars, giving the city a fairy-tale-like ambience. Wandering away from the town center, he turned a corner and blinked a few times as he gazed upon what looked to be a massive whale breaching from a canal. What the…? As he moved closer he could see it was, indeed, a whale. Made from trash. He Googled it. Not just trash, but plastic pulled from the ocean. Five tons worth. Despite the throbbing pain from his wound, he couldn’t help but smile: The forty-foot trash sculpture, silhouetted against a backdrop of medieval architecture, was both whimsical and poignant. It did what art was supposed to do, make people think. That the city portrayed it so proudly said a lot for its citizens. And it made Bruce wonder—did Bruges always have such a fun-loving approach to art, and if so, did Jan van Eyck share his adopted city’s whimsical outlook? If so, it would help explain the layers of mystery and playful riddles he had embedded in the Ghent Altarpiece and his other paintings.
Satisfied that his detour had been worthwhile, he returned to the SUV. They stopped for breakfast and made the hour-long drive southeast to Ghent before the morning rush hour. By 8:00, half an hour before the church opened to visitors, Bruce was standing in front of the majestic Saint Bavo’s Cathedral, home of the Ghent Altarpiece.
He had extensively researched the famous piece of art, but he knew little about the building which housed it. From a tourist brochure he found in a trash barrel, he learned that the Gothic cathedral was built during medieval times. Opposite the cathedral stood a second soaring structure, the Ghent Belfry tower. This tower reminded Bruce of the tower he had just visited in Bruges, though the Ghent version boasted a golden dragon atop the spire, apparently standing guard over the city. It was from atop this tower that the photo of Saint Bavo’s used in the brochure had obviously been taken.
Bruce circled the massive cathedral, appreciative of both its grand scale and attention to the minutest detail. By the time he completed his circuit, the doors had opened for the day’s first visitors. He paid the entrance fee and went straight to the Ghent Altarpiece, displayed in a chapel tucked into the front left alcove of the cathedral. He let his eyes adjust to the dim lights, presumably kept low to preserve the artwork, and approached. He had studied high-resolution images of the painting online, but the six-hundred-year-old altar decoration practically glowed in the dimly-lit room. For medieval viewers who had never experienced the radiance of oil-based colored paints, the experience must have been almost spiritual. Which, of course, was the whole idea of religious art and architecture.
He walked around the collection of hinged panels, together the size of a barn door weighing more than an elephant. Over the centuries, many of the panels had been stolen and recovered; today, only the Just Judges panel remained separated from its flock. There was no need to study the remaining paintings themselves—the digitized versions online had allowed Bruce weeks of near-microscopic analysis. He was here instead to get a feel for the art and its space, to try to imagine how the artist intended the public to interact with the piece. How to interpret it. How, perhaps, to decode it.
After forty-five minutes, he checked his watch. As much as he would have liked to spend the morning appreciating what many art experts believed was one of the ten most important paintings in the world, he needed to get to Brussels to catch his flight. With a sigh, he exited the chapel.
A restroom sign above a staircase heading down to the basement caught his eye. His finger throbbed—he needed to change his bandage and pop a couple more Advil. As he descended the stairs, he found himself in a Romanesque-style crypt. Apparently, the massive basilica structure had, amazingly, been built over an earlier 10th-century church. He scanned the walls, covered with frescoes and other decorations dating back to the time of the Crusades. But it was when his eyes wandered downward that he froze: He was standing on a black-and-white checkerboard-style tile floor, complete with Templar crosses engraved onto some of the tiles. He was no expert on the Templars. But he knew a Templar motif when he saw it. Or, in this case, was standing on it.
He moved on and, with wide eyes, studied the dozens of Templar-era frescoes, desperate to understand their meaning but fully aware that he did not have the requisite training to decipher their mysteries. He was an art thief turned art recoverer. But that didn’t mean he knew what it all meant. Just like he had no idea how to build a sailboat, though he could captain one through the worst of storms.
He took the stairs up two at a time and dialed Cameron Thorne’s number in Boston, not caring that it was the middle of the night. “I’m sending you a pair of plane tickets. I need you to come to Ghent and figure this out for me.” He paused to make sure Cam was fully awake and lowered his voice. “There’s Templar iconography all over this cathedral.”
Somewhere between leaving the bar and ducking into his office building down the block, Katarina learned that her pickup’s name was Gerry. Or maybe he said Gary. The lobby of the nondescript brick office building was empty other than a few takeout menus littering the vestibule. Based on the marquee, he was either an advertising executive or an accountant. She guessed the former. Using a key card, Gerry swiped open the elevator. She had sensed a change in him since they left the bar—his breathing had quickened, and his verbal jousting had become less skilled. In his mind, he was already half-naked.
Taking her by the elbow, he guided her into the elevator. Even before the door had closed, he had pulled her to him, covering her mouth with his and forcing his tongue deep inside. She responded in kind, pressing her body against him, the bulge in his pants promising at a fulfilling interlude. Separating from her, he reached back and pushed the kill button on the elevator panel. With a leer, he unzipped his pants,
slid his cock through the opening in his boxer shorts, and guided her head downward.
Okay, then. Some men wanted foreplay, others wanted to get right to it. That was the thing with bar pickups. You never knew how they would go. Which was, she knew, part of the allure. Reaching into her jeans pocket, she removed a condom and began to unwrap it. Suddenly he backhanded her across the face, the smack of skin on skin echoing off the elevator’s walls. As she fell to a knee, he grabbed her hair and yanked her head toward his crotch. “I’m not wearing that. Just suck it.”
Katarina took a deep breath. She licked blood off her lip and coiled her body as a surge of adrenaline coursed through her veins. Wrong move, asshole. With mongoose-like quickness, she jabbed upward with her right hand, her clawed fingers digging into his scrotum, fingernails searching for testicles. He gasped and staggered as her vice-like grip found their mark and tightened. Off-balance, he reached for the grab bar at the back of the elevator. As he did so, she released his scrotum and caught his wrist. With precise movements borne of a lifetime of athletics, she slid his arm through the gap between the grab bar and the elevator wall, rotated his forearm a quarter-turn, and wrenched it backward. Even over his scream, she heard the sound of ligaments tearing and bones snapping in his elbow. He fell to the ground, writhing.
Still crouching, Katarina removed his loafers and yanked his pants and boxers off, over his now-flaccid member. She balled up his clothes and tucked them under her arm. Taking careful aim, she lifted her leg and stomped viciously into his groin. This time he did not scream as much as whimper. Smiling to herself, she wondered if medieval men reacted to penis-stealing witches in the same way.
Stepping over him, she reactivated the elevator and pushed the lobby button. As the ding announced her arrival, she bent over his cowering form, his face now almost as white as his teeth. She offered a plastic smile and kissed him lightly on the nose even as he tried to edge away. “I hope it was as good for you as it was for me, darling.”
Treasure Templari Page 7