The Oath of Nimrod: Giants, MK-Ultra and the Smithsonian Coverup (Book #4 in Templars in America Series)

by David S. Brody

  Randall nodded. “I understand he is a danger.”

  “Perhaps he will not act on this threat, Papa. Perhaps he will change his mind or not be elected in the first place.” Her eyes smoldered, just as Consuela’s did when she felt passionate about something. “But we can not take that chance. It is like the 1962 situation in reverse: President Kennedy could not risk Khrushchev pointing nuclear missiles at him from so close by, no matter how unlikely it was he would use them. It is the same for us.”

  She took her hand off Randall’s arm and stepped back. She held his eyes for a few seconds before speaking. “We can not risk having a crazy man who wants to invade Cuba sitting in the White House.”

  Amanda kissed Cam at the corner of Tremont and Boylston, in front of the eight-story granite Masonic Grand Lodge, one of the more venerated Masonic structures in North America. They paused for a few seconds to admire the mosaic murals adorning the exterior walls. “You sure you don’t want me to come with you?” Cam asked.

  “No. It’s only half a block up. I think I’ll have more luck alone.” She smiled. “You know, the helpless girl approach.”

  “I’m not so sure about helpless. Just ask Chung. Call me when you leave and I’ll come out and meet you.”

  Both of them looked gaunt and colorless after the previous night. But at least they were stylishly haggard, she in a black evening gown, he in a tuxedo. Apparently the Freemasons liked to dress up. She kissed him again. “Shouldn’t be more than a half hour.”

  The wind whipped across Boston Common as she walked up Tremont Street, her overcoat pulled tight around her. She checked her watch: a few minutes before seven. Based on a call she had made, Dr. Anoosian saw his last patient at 6:30. Assuming every appointment lasted at least a half hour, she should catch him before he left for the weekend.

  She rang a bell in the foyer and was buzzed through a fingerprint-marked glass door. A faded label, ‘Artun Anoosian, DDM, 4th Floor’ directed her—she punched at the buttons of an old, cramped elevator and ascended, shaking and bumping along the way. A cheerful male voice called out as the door opened: “To your right, end of the hall. Have a seat in the waiting room.”

  The room was tired and cramped but clean. Also empty, the receptionist presumably having left for the day. The sound of a drill, accompanied by an occasional moan, wafted from behind a closed door. Five minutes later a pimply-faced young man wearing an Emerson College sweatshirt loped out from behind that door and passed through the waiting room, followed by a plump, smiling man with bushy gray eyebrows, olive skin and an appropriately bright dentist’s smile. “I am Dr. Anoosian.” He eyed her gown. “Is there an emergency?” He had an accent which, if exaggerated, would sound something like Count Dracula in a low-budget horror film.

  She stood. “No, Doctor, no emergency. My name is Amanda Spencer-Gunn.” She held out her hand and he shook it stiffly. “I was hoping I might ask you a few questions. I promise it will not take much of your time.”

  He glanced at his watch and sighed. “My wife is waiting for me for dinner.” He eyed her like a man who knew that the company of a beautiful young woman would be preferable to that of his wife, but who wondered also whether it was all worth the risk. He sighed again. “Very well. How may I be of service?” He leaned against the receptionist’s desk a few feet to one side of her.

  She pulled a copy of the old dental journal article from her purse and handed it to him. “I believe you wrote this.”

  He glanced at it, nodded and rubbed his eyes. “I was wondering when this would happen. You are a reporter, I assume? No doubt part of the liberal media?”

  She tilted her head. Why did he think that? “Reporter? No. I simply wanted to ask you a few questions about hyperdontia.”

  He eyed her suspiciously. “Very well. I will do my best to answer them.”

  She took a deep breath and smiled, trying to ease the tension in the room. “I was just wondering if this type of hyperdontia—an entire second set of teeth—is common?”

  He frowned. “If you read the article, you know the answer to this question already. It is very rare.”

  “Yes, of course. Otherwise there would have been no reason to write about it.” This was not going well. She took another deep breath. “You noted in the article that your patient was almost seven feet tall. Do you think his height is in any way related to the hyperdontia?”

  His eyes narrowed. “I do not believe you said what your interest in this subject is? I can see you do not suffer from hyperdontia yourself. And I do not believe you are a dental student, or you would have mentioned this fact already.”

  She lifted her chin. “I am merely doing research, and I came upon your article.”

  “Yes, doing research.” He stood and handed the article back to her. “As I suspected, you are a reporter. I am afraid I cannot help you. You are asking me to divulge confidential patient information.” He gestured to the door.

  Why did he think she was a reporter? She stood to leave. This had clearly not gone well. “I am sorry to have bothered you. Thank you for your time.”

  He nodded and turned away. Sadly, almost as an afterthought, he spoke over his shoulder: “I feared this day would come. There are no secrets when you run for President.”

  As Cam entered the Grand Lodge foyer, Randall, wearing a tuxedo and Masonic apron, strolled over to greet him. Randall’s Arlington Lodge was using the Grand Lodge to host tonight’s event. “Welcome to the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts, chartered in 1733, making it the oldest Grand Lodge in North America.” Randall smiled wryly and gestured up a couple of stairs to a high-ceilinged room filled with dark woods and plush furnishings that Cam usually associated with the waiting rooms of some of Boston’s old Brahmin law firms. Unlike the law offices, the room smelled like cigars and wet wool. “Notice the quiet elegance of our lobby,” Randall continued.

  “Quiet elegance?”

  “That’s another phrase for stodgy.” He pulled Cam aside. “And you must not laugh when the Brothers address me as ‘Most Worshipful.’”

  “Most Worshipful?”

  “Yes. As in, ‘Most Worshipful, can I hang your coat?’ It took me a while to get used to it as well. Because my brother was once Grand Master, he retains that title. And, of course, as far as anyone knows, I am my brother.”

  Cam’s eyes had been drawn more to the alternating black and white square floor tiles. Every Masonic Lodge he had ever been in had the same floor pattern. “Okay, Most Worshipful, you’re not going to tell me this floor has nothing to do with the Templars, are you?” The Templar flag, the Beauseant, featured the same black and white pattern, as did the floor of King Solomon’s Temple. Despite the countless overlapping rituals and iconography between the Freemasons and the Templars, there were still some historians who doubted the two groups were connected.

  Randall spread his hands. “We are not a secret society. We are a society of secrets.”

  Cam shrugged off the typically unresponsive response and explained that Amanda would be joining them in a few minutes. There was a flush to Randall’s cheek that Cam had never seen before and his full head of cottony- white hair, normally so neat, was disheveled. Perhaps he had had a glass of wine with his Brothers. “Have you met Professor Antonopoulos yet?”

  “No. I was detained this afternoon and only just arrived myself.”

  A steady stream of tuxedo-clad men, many with wives or girlfriends, passed through the lobby toward the elevator. Cam had lectured here a couple of years ago; he guessed the professor would be speaking in the Gothic Hall upstairs. It looked like he’d have a good crowd.

  Cam made small talk with a couple of the Brothers. He mentioned the Phoenicians in passing, and one of the Brothers informed him that Hiram Abiff, the most prominent historical figure in Freemasonry, was a Phoenician. “He was an architect. King Solomon hired him to build the original Temple in Jerusalem.”

  Cam tilted his head. “Wait, wouldn’t you want Jewish builders building a sacred Jewish tem
ple?”

  The man nodded. “You would think so. But apparently this Hiram Abiff was something special.”

  Or, Cam mused, perhaps the Masonic-Templar ties to the ancient Phoenicians went deeper than just a few navigational charts and maps. For Solomon to hire—and the Freemasons to venerate—a pagan like Hiram Abiff made no sense unless there was more to the story. As he and Amanda had discussed earlier, all roads seemed to lead back to the Phoenicians.

  Amanda strolled in, interrupting his thoughts. She shook her hair loose and took his arm. “How did it go?” he asked.

  “Not well,” she sighed. “He thought I was a bloody reporter.”

  “Why? Who cares about some guy’s teeth?”

  “That’s what I thought. But I think I might have figured it out.”

  “What?”

  She lowered her voice. “I think the patient, the bloke with the double rows of teeth, was Senator Lovecroft—”

  Randall appeared out of nowhere, interrupting Amanda. He greeted her, bowing and kissing her hand, as Cam pondered Amanda’s discovery. Could that mean Lovecroft descended from a race of giants? Even if not true, the mere allegation, accompanied with the dental article, was not the type of thing likely to win him votes….

  “Cameron claims you do not have a sister for me,” Randall crooned. “Pray tell me he is mistaken.”

  She laughed lightly. “No sister. But I have an older brother, and also a hideously obese old aunt.”

  “Alas, I will just have to win you away from Cameron.” He released her hand and offered his arm in its stead. “Come, my dear. The lecture begins in five minutes.” After a few steps he turned and sighed. “And I suppose you might as well join us, Mr. Thorne.”

  Evgenia had long ago learned that disguises did not work for her. She was tall and striking and bronze-skinned—it was tough to disguise herself as anything besides a runway model or beach volleyball player. So instead she turned her looks to her advantage.

  Dressed in a hip-hugging black cocktail dress, she sauntered over to the middle-aged Masonic Brother seated behind a desk in the foyer checking off names. She bent low, revealing a generous amount of cleavage. “Is this where Professor Antonopoulos is lecturing?” she asked with a smile.

  “It sure is.”

  She exhaled and swung her hair. “Oh, thank goodness. I’ve been so lost. I am one of his ex-students and he invited me to come hear him speak tonight….”

  A few more smiles and white lies and she had talked her way in.

  Based on what she had seen in Connecticut, she was not the only puppeteer pulling the professor’s strings. She assumed she was being used as a kind of distraction—Antonopoulos would be so preoccupied by Evgenia framing him for selling an artifact he did not own that he would overlook the too-perfect weathering patterns of the carving. So far, she had to admit, it was working.

  But if she was the “other agent” in this spy triangle, that meant another operative, perhaps even Rachel, had been assigned to Antonopoulos as well. And that agent might be in attendance tonight. Evgenia needed a way to stay close to Antonopoulos without being seen.

  She rode the elevator to the seventh floor. She had taken a few minutes to research the layout of the Grand Lodge, so she expected Gothic Hall to be decorated in a “cheerful red tone,” but she hadn’t expected solid, deep red to dominate the floor, the walls, the seats and the stage curtain. She had a friend once in middle school who talked her parents into letting her paint her room purple; then she went out and bought purple sheets and a purple area rug and purple curtains. A few days later she confided to Evgenia, “I hate my room. My head hurts every time I go in there.”

  Evgenia surveyed the room from the entryway. The performance hall was laid out more like a Victorian theater or playhouse than a meeting room, with a stage and a curtain at the far end and stadium seats facing them. Perhaps half the seats were filled; Antonopoulos fiddled with a projector aimed at a screen on the floor in front of the stage. Apparently the professor would speak from the floor and then afterward autograph books on the stage, where a table and chair had been set up for him, meaning anyone who wanted to talk to him would have to approach him on stage. An idea came to her: If she could hide behind the stage curtain, within earshot of the table….

  Crammed together in the elevator, Randall’s face a mere inches from Amanda’s breast, they ascended. The warm musky scent of her filled Randall’s nostrils. He had never paid less attention to a beautiful woman.

  His mind was on Consuela and Morgana and the revolution and Senator Lovecroft. Nothing else mattered.

  Including Project MK-Ultra. Suddenly he no longer cared what the CIA was doing, why the program continued to exist. He had a more important mission.

  But he could not just cast Cameron aside. If nothing else, the man would become suspicious, which could be a liability—Thorne knew Randall and his brother had switched identities. More importantly, Thorne and his fiancée were his best, in fact only, connection to Lovecroft. So he needed to continue to cultivate the relationship. And what was this Amanda said about a double row of teeth….

  They entered Gothic Hall. “My Lodge is technically hosting this event, so I will need to sit in the back in case something is needed,” Randall said. “As much as I hate to return Amanda to you, I suggest you find a seat closer to the front.” The truth was that Randall needed time to think and did not want to have to make small talk.

  The lights dimmed and Professor Antonopoulos began his PowerPoint presentation. He began lightly, showing an image of a humorous rock formation. “I call this “Rock Bottom,” he said, smiling.

  Rock Bottom Formation

  “I sometimes wonder if it wasn’t the work of some ancient explorers, hoping to moon those that came after them. But more likely it is a natural formation.”

  As the crowd laughed, Randall rose and exited the performance hall. He needed to figure out a way to convince Cameron to set up a meeting with Lovecroft. The obvious approach would be to interest Lovecroft, who chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee, on the activities of Project MK-Ultra. But interesting Lovecroft in MK-Ultra was not a plan, it was a goal.

  A passageway ran up the length of the performance hall, allowing private access to the stage area. Randall paced this hallway, deep in thought. He checked his watch. A half hour had passed. He cracked open a side door and peered into the performance hall; all seemed to be in order. As he turned away a movement caught his eye from behind the stage. Through a gap in the curtain he was certain he saw something move. There were only two ways to access the area behind the curtain: from the stage and from the hallway he was standing in. He dried his palms on his trousers.

  Moving quietly, Randall crept to the end of the hallway and pressed his ear against the door leading directly to the backstage area. Nothing. He dropped to the floor and peered under. No light, no movement. Assuming the door would be well-oiled to prevent noise during a performance, he slowly turned the knob and eased his shoulder into it. The door moved a half-inch; he froze and waited. Nothing. Another couple of inches, another wait. A third push and he turned his body sideways and slid through, entering a rectangular storage area running front to back alongside the stage; dimly lit from the hallway, the room was filled with tools, cleaning supplies and stage props.

  He crossed to the far side of the storage room and waited. The thick curtain blocked whatever lights remained on in the performance hall. Randall counted to thirty, allowing his eyes to adjust. Crawling like a baby, keeping his head low, he ascended a short staircase to the raised stage and peered in. There. In the folds of the curtain, only fifteen feet away, a woman sat cross-legged on the floor, her back to the stage. He studied her, wondering what she could possibly be doing. Was she Antonopoulos’ girlfriend, waiting for a post-lecture tryst? But why sit in the dark?

  It was too dark to make out her features so Randall waited. Five minutes passed, then the woman opened her cell phone and lifted it to her face, presumably to check the
time. The glow briefly illuminated her face. Randall swallowed a gasp. He knew her.

  In fact, he had trained her.

  Randall sunk back down the short staircase and exhaled quietly. What a day for surprises. A daughter he never knew he had. A mission he had waited a lifetime for. And now a student come back to face-off against her mentor. But that was not fair: Did Evgenia even know why he was here? More fundamentally, did Evgenia even know why she was here?

  His brain, normally so efficient, struggled to sift through today’s avalanche of information. As far as he knew, Evgenia still worked in the MK-Ultra division. Which meant it was likely she had been assigned Professor Antonopoulos, presumably to discredit him just as the blogger was trying to discredit Cameron Thorne and he himself had discredited Laurence Gardner. And that meant…

  “Hello Mr. Sid.” He jumped as a hand touched him lightly on the shoulder. Evgenia, crouching, smiled at him in the dim light. “Why are you hiding behind the curtain, one spy said to the other?”

  He tried to bluff his way out. “I am sorry, do I know you?” His brother would have no idea who she was.

  “Nice try. Like I could forget those piercing eyes.”

  This was unfortunate. As far as the Agency knew he was on a cruise around the world. With his new assignment, the last thing he needed was to be subjected to heightened scrutiny. He tried a different tack. “The second spy said to the first, I am behind the curtain so that nobody can see me.”

  She lifted her chin and laughed quietly. “That’s better. So, are you assigned to Antonopoulos as well? I thought you were retired.”

  “I am retired.” He had always liked Evgenia, appreciated her spunk and good humor and raw intellect. Plus, of course, they shared a biracial heritage. He shrugged. “I am here because I am a member of this Lodge. And I saw movement behind the curtain.”

  She shook her head. “And I don’t believe you.” Her tone was light, but her dark eyes shone intently in the dim light. She gestured her head toward the stage, where the professor was discussing a rock carving found in Vermont. “There’s something about that rock carving that smells funny. I’m being played, as is the professor, and I have a feeling you’re the one doing the playing.”