The Isaac Question: Templars and the Secret of the Old Testament (Templars in America Series Book 5)

by David S. Brody

  “Good.”

  An hour later Cam dropped Astarte off at a friend’s house and returned to pick up Amanda. She had changed into a long skirt and blouse and slid into the SUV next to Cam for the forty-minute drive to Boston. “You look nice,” Cam said.

  “What happened to not the least bit charming?”

  “Right. Sorry.” He paused. “You’re wearing that?”

  She smiled sadly. Either he had cheated on her, in which case she could never forgive him, or he was totally innocent, in which case she might never forgive herself for doubting him. A classic lose-lose. She pushed the thought away. “So what kind of event is this?”

  “It’s a commemoration for the Battle of Bunker Hill, specifically General Joseph Warren. He was a doctor and also the Masonic Grand Master at the time. He died in the battle.”

  “I thought the battle was in June, not May.”

  Cam nodded. “June 17. But the Masonic calendar year starts June 24, and they have meetings and conferences that whole week. And they like to do something private. So they have a ceremony in late May every year.”

  “And Randall Sid invited you?”

  “He said there’s something he wants to show me from the top of the monument.”

  She turned. “He’s going to climb it?”

  “Apparently he does every year. He’s a tough old bird.”

  “Then I’m glad I wore comfortable shoes.”

  Cam parked on a side street in Charlestown on the northern edge of Boston. They walked up a slope—Breed’s Hill, not Bunker Hill, as the former was the actual site of the misnamed battle—toward the monument. Federal style row houses, both brick and clapboard, lined the street. “This whole area was burned down by the British during the battle, so most of this architecture is Federalist style, from the early 1800s.” He pointed toward the large grassy area on the top of the hill, their view of the monument itself still blocked by the uninterrupted row of four-story homes. “But you can see the houses ringing the park are much fancier. They’re a later style, Victorian. The committee building the monument ran out of money so they had to sell off part of the battlefield as building lots.” He smiled. “I guess even the Masons run out of money sometimes.”

  As they crested the hill the massive granite obelisk soared above them, surrounded on all sides by lush green lawn.

  Bunker Hill Monument, Charlestown, MA

  They climbed a series of stone stairs toward a bronze statue of a sword-wielding soldier standing guard at the base of the obelisk. “That’s Colonel William Prescott, of the famous line, ‘Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes.’”

  “How high is it?” Amanda asked, glancing up. She had been to most of the historic sites in Boston but had never crossed the bridge into Charlestown.

  “Just over two hundred feet. Tall, but less than half as high as the Washington Monument. But otherwise pretty much identical.”

  “This is in a residential neighborhood, so it seems taller,” Amanda said. “Plus it’s on the top of this hill.”

  Cam pointed. “There’s Randall.”

  Randall and a few dozen other men—all wearing tuxedos and Masonic aprons, many of them a head taller than Randall—stood in a group at the base of the monument, some of the men with wives or dates. Randall spotted Cam and walked over to greet them. The dark-skinned Mason skipped the small-talk. “I’m glad it’s a clear day. You’ll appreciate what I want to show you, Cameron.” He turned to Amanda. “It’s a long climb. Many of the wives will be waiting at the bottom.”

  Amanda worked a Stairmaster for forty-five minutes three times a week. “Lovely. If any of them want to lend me their cameras, I’ll snap off a few shots for them.”

  Randall Sid eyed the crowd impatiently. He cleared his throat and waited for a couple of his lieutenants to quiet the horde gathered at the base of the monument. He refused to yell. “We’ll begin the ceremony in an hour. In the meantime, those that want to climb to the top may do so now.” The monument was closed to the public, but he had arranged for after-hours access. The Freemasons had, after all, built the structure. “This is the equivalent of a twenty-two-story building, and the staircase is narrow, so I urge caution.”

  About a dozen men, in addition to Cameron Thorne and his fiancée whose name Randall could not recall, gathered around Randall. Another woman, probably one of the wives, smiled at Randall and joined the group. Randall had never seen her before, but she wore a loose knee-length skirt over a pair of shapely legs—the climb might be less strenuous if he fell in line behind her.

  She tossed her head. “My name’s Samantha Handrick,” she said with a Southern drawl. “I’m married to Christopher. He just joined a few months back, when we moved here from Savannah, Georgia. But my daddy was a thirty-third degree.” She smiled again, wide brown eyes holding his. “Just like you.”

  It had been a long time since a woman smiled at him like that. Maybe it was just her Southern charm. Randall bowed slightly. “After you.”

  They climbed slowly, the air heavy and damp and the stone stairs narrow and winding. Samantha led, followed by Randall, Thorne, his fiancée and a dozen of the Brothers. Randall tried to keep his breathing even. “This monument was originally built to honor General Joseph Warren.”

  Samantha turned and smiled. “I met my girlfriends for cocktails last week at the Warren Tavern, just down the road. The sign said it was built in 1780 and that George Washington and Paul Revere drank there. Is that true?”

  Randall removed his hand from the outside railing and turned both palms upward. “I am old, my dear, but not that old.” He smiled. “Yet I don’t doubt the story.”

  She laughed gaily, the way he had always imagined well-bred, carefree women of leisure laughed. “Now, stop,” she said. “I did not say any such thing about you being old. At least you are making the climb. My Christopher’s idea of exercise is pushing the buttons on the channel remote.”

  Tiny beads of perspiration had formed above her top lip and on her nose, and a warm, floral scent wafted over him as he walked in her wake. They climbed in silence for a few minutes, Samantha and her flowing skirt setting a steady and alluring pace. Randall wished he were dressed more casually—his tuxedo constrained his movements and the dress shoes bit into his feet. He would need a long rest at the top. The ceremony could wait.

  Randall turned his attention to his guest. “You seemed interested in the alignments I showed you in Washington.”

  “Very much so,” Thorne replied.

  “Well, obviously, in Washington we had the advantage of designing a city from scratch. Here in Boston, things were different. Even though ours is the third oldest Grand Lodge in the world, after England and Ireland, when the Boston Grand Lodge was chartered in 1733 the city was already a hundred years old.” He paused to breathe. “The streets were already laid out and the city built up. Plus there was a time, in the early 1800s, when anti-Masonic feelings ran deep in Boston. So we needed to be more creative, and also more … what is the word … circumspect, with our alignments.”

  “I’m expecting we’re going to see some of those alignments in a few minutes,” Thorne said.

  Samantha turned. “My daddy used to say y’all were not a secret society, but a society with secrets.” She smiled again and leaned down, her breasts dangling inches above Randall’s nose, her floral scent filling his nostrils. She whispered at Randall. “I just love secrets.”

  Randall swallowed. Secrets conveyed power. And some women, he knew, found men with power intoxicating. Especially men who reminded them of their father. It was obviously nothing more than a harmless flirtation, but it had been years, if not decades, since a woman this attractive had paid him this much attention. As the saying went, he was old, but he wasn’t dead yet…

  “Oh,” she said, “I see the top step.”

  After giving his guests a few minutes to enjoy the view, and himself a few minutes to catch his wind, he gathered Thorne, his fiancée, and Samantha around the observ
ation area’s south-facing window. He pointed toward the Boston skyline and moved aside to offer Throne a clear view. “Can you find the State House dome?”

  He pointed it out.

  “It was built in 1795,” Randall said. “At that time, there were no skyscrapers, of course. A generation later, in 1825, construction began on this monument. As you might imagine, these two structures dominated the skyline.”

  Thorne’s fiancée spoke. “Both buildings relate to the sun. The obelisk dates back to ancient Egypt and sun worship. And the gold-covered dome resembles the sun.”

  Randall nodded. Thorne had picked a sharp one. “Correct. Around this time the Freemasons began to look for an appropriate location to build our Grand Lodge. It took a few decades, until 1859, but we finally found the spot we needed.” He turned to Thorne. “Can you guess where?”

  Thorne squinted into the distance. “Here,” Randall said, pulling a pair of powerful binoculars from their carrying case. “These should help.”

  Thorne focused the lenses, though Randall sensed his guest already knew what he was going to find. “I think I see the Grand Lodge building right behind the State House dome.”

  “Yes. Yes you do.”

  Thorne handed the binoculars to his fiancée and looked at Randall. “And you’re going to tell me it’s not a coincidence.” He smiled. “I, in turn, am going to believe you.”

  “You should. The Grand Lodge, the State House dome, and the Bunker Hill Monument are in perfect alignment.” Randall paused while they passed the binoculars around and considered the unlikely possibility that the Grand Lodge just happened to be in line with the sun-symbolizing obelisk and golden dome. “We Freemasons love symbolism and allegory.”

  “And,” Thorne said, “you also love sun worship. That’s why you aligned the Lodge with sun symbols. Tic-tac-toe, three in a row.”

  Randall shrugged. “I didn’t say that. You did.”

  Thorne shook his head and chuckled. “Well, you were right, I’m blown away.”

  Randall checked his watch, pleased at Thorne’s reaction. Most of the rest of the group had already begun to descend. “We should be heading down.”

  “Can you show me again where the Lodge is?” Samantha said. “I think I spotted it but I’m not sure.” She put her handbag on the window ledge, removed a tissue, and dabbed her face with it.

  “Cameron, can you go ahead and tell them I’ll be down soon?” Randall asked as he turned to assist Samantha. He had no idea where this might go, but there were worst places to be than alone at the top of a tower with a beautiful woman.

  She leaned closer, her body brushing against his, and pointed toward the window. “Is that the dome there, to the left of the bridge stanchion?”

  “That’s it,” he replied. He put the binoculars back to his eyes. “And just behind the dome is a gray stone building. That’s the Lodge.”

  He lowered the binoculars just in time to see Samantha’s arm arcing through the air, a black club-like object hurtling toward the side of his head. In the split-second before impact, he realized she must have waited until they were alone before removing the weapon from her handbag.

  It was his last thought.

  “That’s pretty cool,” Cam said to Amanda as they descended the Bunker Hill Monument. The connection between the Masons and the ancient Egyptian sun worshipers was becoming uncontestable. “Nobody can see the alignment today because of all the other buildings, but back in the 1800s it must have been obvious. And impressive.”

  “I wonder how many other old cities have similar alignments. New York, Philadelphia, London, Edinburgh, Paris—I bet they all have secrets like Boston.”

  Cam was about to respond when the clack-clack-clack of someone running down the stairs above them interrupted. A female voice echoed in the narrow tower. “Help! Mr. Sid has fallen!”

  Cam spun and raced up the stairs, taking them two at a time, Amanda behind him. A couple of flights into his climb he nearly collided with Samantha on her way down. Breathless, she spoke. “Mr. Sid fell. He must have slipped. He was right in front of me. He hit his head and then tumbled down and down.” Tears ran down her cheeks. “He’s not moving. He’s not breathing.”

  Amanda pushed by, using the railing to pull herself along. She had some first aid training from coaching gymnastics.

  “You call 911,” Cam said to Samantha. “Then go to the bottom and see if there’s a doctor there. Or at least a first aid kit.”

  “Okay,” she sobbed. “Okay.”

  Cam reached Amanda less than a minute later. She was bent over Randall’s twisted body, attempting to revive him with chest compressions. She had straightened his upper body so his head rested on a stair, but his legs remained askew like an old scarecrow. She counted, compressing at each number. “Damn it, breathe,” she ordered.

  “Anything?” Cam asked. Blood covered Randall’s ear and shirt collar. Randall’s body lay sprawled only twenty steps from the top. Maybe his eyes had not had time to adjust to the dim stairwell.

  “Nothing,” Amanda responded. At the count of thirty she shifted, lifted his chin, pinched his nose and breathed into his mouth twice, each time his chest rising slightly in response. Then she returned to the compressions.

  “This is bad, Cam,” she panted. “He’s not breathing on his own.”

  In the distance a siren wailed. Amanda continued CPR, alternating between compressions and breathing, while Cam watched and wondered. He had noticed the old man looking up Samantha’s skirt on the way up. On the way down he would have had a clear view down her loose-fitting blouse as the stairs spiraled.

  So why would he have walked in front of her?

  Twenty minutes later Cam and Amanda followed the paramedics down the monument stairs as they carried Randall Sid’s lifeless body. Because of the tight stairwell they had to angle him downward as they descended, his tuxedoed body strapped to a backboard.

  A policeman met them at the bottom. “You were the ones to find the body?” he asked.

  “No,” Cam said. “A woman was with him. Samantha. I think she said her last name was Hendricks or Handrick. She’s the one who called 911.” He scanned the area. “But I don’t see her.”

  A few dozen Masons and guests remained gathered at the base of the obelisk, all eyes on their deceased Grand Master. The policeman called out. “I’m looking for Samantha.” He waited a few seconds. “Samantha?”

  He turned to Cam and Amanda for help. Amanda spoke. “She was at the front of the line with us. In her thirties, long brown hair. Wearing a light blue floral skirt and a beige blouse.”

  A middle-aged man replied. “She’s the one who told us Randall fell. She asked for a doctor.” He looked around. “But I don’t know where she went.”

  “I think I saw her walking away,” a woman said, pointing.

  Cam’s suspicions grew. Why wouldn’t she stick around? “She said her husband’s name was Christopher and he was a new Mason. Anyone know who he is?”

  Blank faces.

  Cam turned to the policeman. “I’m not so sure this was an accident,” he whispered.

  Tereza Bilic walked north in the fading light of dusk, toward the seamier neighborhoods of Charlestown’s squat brick public housing complexes. Not that they compared to Dubrovnik during the Croatian War of Independence of her youth. More than half her city had been destroyed. From its ashes—and from ashes throughout the old Yugoslavia—rose an entire generation of citizens trained in urban warfare. Many of them, like herself, had little trouble finding work.

  Careful to avoid security cameras, Tereza turned right on Bunker Hill Avenue and found the old-model sedan she had stolen from a Logan airport satellite parking lot earlier in the day. Removing her wig and skirt, she wriggled into a pair of jeans, put on a baseball cap and pair of horn-rimmed glasses and eased into traffic. She crossed the Tobin Bridge into Chelsea and followed Route 1 north for a few miles to a shopping plaza. Using a rag she found in the stolen car, she wiped clean the metal fla
shlight she had used as a weapon and tossed it into a dumpster.

  She examined the old rag. She had opted to club the old man a second time on his temple before shoving him down the stairs, just to make sure the job was done. There might be skin tissue or blood traces on the rag, and also in her bag. No sense taking any risks. She bought a pound of ground beef in a grocery store and walked back to her car parked along the edge of the lot. After removing her passport and a few other personal items, she ripped open the hamburger and placed the beef, along with the rag, inside her handbag. She tossed it into the woods, a treat for some dog or wild animal to devour overnight.

  Leaving the car in the parking lot, she jumped on the 111 bus headed into downtown Boston. As she rode she sent a quick text—Package delivered—before deleting the message from the phone and removing the SIM card and battery. Once in Boston she ducked into the subway, discreetly dropped the phone into a trash can and took a train to South Station, arriving forty-five minutes before her scheduled overnight train to Washington, D.C. From there she would catch a flight to Paris.

  Tereza had spent almost a week in Boston, and prior to that a week in Washington, her original assignment only to follow the old man and report on his activities. Then last night the order had come in for elimination. As was her custom, she wasted no time. Nor would she waste any time disappearing.

  Amanda took Cam’s arm as they walked away from the Bunker Hill Monument, now illuminated by spotlights, toward their car. She wasn’t a hypocrite—she hadn’t much liked Randall Sid in life, so she wouldn’t shed fake tears at his death. Cam seemed convinced he had been murdered, and his instincts on this kind of thing were usually spot on. “Assuming you are correct, who would want him dead?” she asked.

  He exhaled through a clenched jaw. “I have to assume it’s related to all the other shit going on. The lottery ticket debacle, the deed, the photographs, the guy attacking me on my run.”