by C. M. Palov
“I’ve given little thought to shucking the mortal coil. Although, like Dr. Franklin, perhaps something pithy and—”
“Oh my God!” Edie gasped, grabbing his arm. “I just saw Rico Suave!”
CHAPTER 68
“At least I think I saw him,” Edie amended, having caught sight of a dark-haired, well-dressed blur out of the corner of her eye. “Whatever I saw, we need to get out of here!” Particularly since the cemetery was eerily deserted.
Outwardly calm, Caedmon leaned in close like a man about to whisper sweet-nothings into his lover’s ear. “Keep your voice down. We don’t want to alert our foe.”
A command easier said than done, her nerves like vibrating guitar strings. A frenzied flamenco come to life.
“I need to know where precisely you saw the bastard.”
“To my left, about fifty yards back.” Although tempted to turn and point, she didn’t.
“Do you by any chance have a mirror in your satchel?”
“Um, yeah, I think so.” Opening her shoulder bag, she hurriedly ransacked the contents. A few seconds later, she removed an old cosmetic compact. Fumbling a bit with the latch, she opened it, wordlessly passing it to him.
The mirror enabled Caedmon to scan the cemetery without turning his head. “Damn. The bastard’s too far away to identify. Although he appears to be manning the front gate. Since the cemetery is enclosed by a seven-foot-high brick wall and that gate is the only way out of here, I suspect he’s waiting for us to come to him.”
At which time Rico Suave could shoot them, stab them, or even hit them in the head with a metal pipe. And there wasn’t anything they could do to stop him.
“Admittedly, our options are limited.” Closing the compact, Caedmon returned it to her.
“God, I’m so stupid! I’ve got a cell phone. I can dial 911,” she exclaimed, riding a big Waikiki wave of relief. “One call and the cops will be here in a jiff.”
“If they show up.”
“Why wouldn’t they?”
Caedmon raised a dubious brow. “What exactly do you plan on telling the police? That a lone man, who has done nothing untoward or threatening, is milling about, minding his own business. No crime in that.”
“He’s murdered two men!” Edie hissed. Being cool under pressure was one thing. Being blasé in the face of danger another matter altogether. “In this country, that’s a capital offense.”
“For which we have no proof.” Caedmon stood up. Grabbing the satchel, he wrapped his other hand around her upper arm, pulling her upright. He gave her a tight smile. “Time to put on your jolly face.”
“And this is going to help us how?”
He made no reply. Instead, he slung a companionable arm around her shoulder as he shepherded her along the crushed-stone walkway. In the complete opposite direction from the cemetery gate. While relieved to be moving away from Rico Suave, she didn’t like putting so much distance between themselves and the gate. That being the only means of escape from the bricked enclosure.
As they leisurely strolled, Edie could feel the tensed muscles in Caedmon’s arm. And though he smiled and attentively bent his head in her direction, his eyes kept darting from side to side. Plotting. Planning.
A few moments later, plan evidently hatched, he veered away from the walkway onto a dirt path that rib-boned off at a scraggly angle, the grass beaten from years of pedestrian traffic. The arm instantly dropped from her shoulder as Caedmon snatched hold of her hand, accelerating the pace as they hurried past stone crosses, carved sarcophagi, funerary urns, and tilted headstones.
“This is as good a bulwark as any,” he muttered, dodging behind a massive granite plinth surmounted by a carved memorial obelisk. “And completely out of the bastard’s line of sight.”
Edie nestled close, well aware that they were playing a potentially deadly game of hide-and-seek.
Pressed against her backside, Caedmon peered around the granite pedestal. “Perfect . . . our gatekeeper is on the move.”
He’s on the move! A garbled sound—midway between a gasp and a whimper—passed between her lips. Caedmon chastened her with a cautionary glance.
“You mean that you actually want him to follow us?” she whispered.
“How else to lure him away from the exit? Which brings me to the matter of your coat. If you would be so kind as to hand it over.”
“Why do you want my trench coat?”
“It will make the perfect capote de brega. Bullfighter’s cape,” he translated.
All thumbs, Edie clumsily untied the belt and removed her coat. Clueless as to what exactly he intended to do with the fuchsia-colored garment, she handed it to him.
The last thing she expected was Caedmon to roll it into a ball and shove it under his wool sports jacket.
“Off to set the trap.”
Edie grabbed his wrist. “Please don’t tell me this is where we go our separate ways and meet up later in Prague.”
“If all goes well, I’ll only be gone a few minutes.” A determined look on his face, Caedmon reassuringly squeezed her hand. “If the bastard shows up before I return, kick him in the cubes and scream like a banshee.”
Battle orders given, he took off running, tucking his tall frame into a low crouch as he zigzagged from monument to obelisk to tree trunk. The dark clouds overhead washed the cemetery in muted shades of gray and granite. She soon lost sight of Caedmon, inciting a barrage of graphic, gory images to flash across her mind’s eye. Worst-case scenarios.
In her peripheral vision, Edie saw a blaze of fuchsia. And though she knew it was an illusion, it appeared that someone decked out in a bright pink coat was crouched behind a tombstone.
The trap had been set.
Anxiously peering around the corner of the granite plinth, she searched for Caedmon, still unable to locate him amid the stone jumble. Just then, a large hand snaked in front of her, covering her mouth. In the next instant, she was yanked against a male torso. Completely immobilized.
“Shhh! It’s me.”
Caedmon!
Relieved, Edie slumped against his chest.
“No time to chat!” he whispered, removing his hand from her mouth. “He took the bait.”
“I don’t think so! Look over there!” She pointed to a fast-moving blur. “He’s headed this way!”
That being their cue, they sprinted toward the front gate. Their pounding footfalls made a loud crunching sound on the stone walkway. Up ahead, Edie could see that the double gate was closed.
Please, please, don’t be locked!
Caedmon charged ahead of her to the gate. With a mighty tug, he swung it wide open, metal hinges loudly squeaking. Seconds later, they charged through the opened gateway, emerging onto a city pavement teeming with tourists and office workers.
Always thinking two moves ahead, Caedmon maneuvered them into the middle of a large crowd headed in the direction of the U.S. Mint.
“I don’t know about you, but I stupidly thought Rico’s ‘sell by’ date had expired,” she wheezed, her breath noticeably uneven.
“Still very much on the shelf.” Breaking away from the crowd, Caedmon stepped off the curb and raised his right hand. “Taxi!”
CHAPTER 69
Softly chuckling, Saviour Panos watched the fleeing pair get into a taxi.
Where you go, I will go. And where you stay, I will stay.
He didn’t know what that was from, but Mercurius often quoted it. Apropos given the circumstances.
Back in London, he’d followed the pair to Heath-row, where an obliging ticket clerk had informed him that they’d purchased nonstop tickets to Philadelphia. When their flight landed nine hours later, Mercurius followed them from Philadelphia International Airport to Library Hall. When Saviour arrived shortly thereafter, having caught a different flight, Mercurius had had the wise foresight to purchase a tracking device from a downtown spy shop, the sort of establishment that caters to men anxious to catch their cheating wives in the act of copulation.
Giving him the tracking device, Mercurius had hugged him tight before taking his leave.
Take heart, my beloved. You are not to blame for what happened in London.
Maybe so, but Saviour was determined to make amends.
And the Creator was doing all in his power to assist him—knapsacks, purses, and briefcases were expressly forbidden inside the Reading Room. Because of the regulation, the Brit and his woman had been forced to check their satchel at the Library Hall front desk. Saviour simply had to wait for the attendant to leave her post. It’d taken but a moment to insert the small tracking device—embedded on an adhesive strip—inside the Miller woman’s bag.
He’d enjoyed the romp in the cemetery. Had enjoyed the fear that he’d seen on the bitch’s face. With the tracking device in place, the pair had become his unwitting pawns. Saviour glanced at the display screen on his PDA smartphone, able to track their every move on the interactive map.
And that meant he would be able to make amends, wanting only to please Mercurius. Particularly since he could not pleasure his beloved sexually. At least not to climax. That was never permitted, his mentor a celibate.
In the self-same point where the soul is made sensual, in the self-same point is the city of God.
Another of his mentor’s favorite sayings. Although Saviour could not comprehend the logic. According to Mercurius, a man can communicate with the Creator by manipulating the flow of sexual energy as it traverses his spine. A mystical fire that burned its way to the third eye. The one that was all seeing. When that point was flooded with sacred energy, the life force of creation, a gateway was opened between heaven and earth.
As above, so below.
Saviour was too coarse by far. He lacked the spiritual awareness to harness his own sexual energy. For him, the point of arousal was to come. Not to go. Once the blood pumped into his cock, there was but one outcome. And it did not involve the Creator.
But Mercurius was a man of deep and abiding spiritual beliefs who daily attempted to open the sacred gate. To master the lower self so he could communicate with the Creator. Saviour considered it a great honor to assist him in this endeavor.
Fire and flowing water are contraries. Happy thou if thou canst unite them.
And how happy Mercurius will be when he presented him with the Emerald Tablet. Because his mentor would then be able to apply his sacred knowledge to that most ecstatic of all labors: the act of creation. Making something out of nothing.
His mentor was fond of reading aloud from the Old Testament. Saviour particularly enjoyed the tales of valiant men engaged in violent conflict. According to Mercurius, the Emerald Tablet enabled Moses to perform all of his miraculous feats—parting the Red Sea, producing manna in the desert, making the sun and the moon to stand still, and causing the walls of Jericho to come tumbling down. Creating something out of nothing.
Saviour again glanced at the PDA. The pair was headed to the train station. He smiled.
Where you go, I will go. . . .
CHAPTER 70
Side by side, they stood in front of three sets of double bronze doors that marked the entrance to the Adams Annex.
Shielding her eyes from the early morning light, Edie could see that each door contained six bas-relief figures. A veritable rogue’s gallery—Odin, Nabu, Brahma, Quetzalcoatl—to name a few. However, Caedmon’s attention was focused on the figure depicted on the upper tier of the center door. Thoth. Egyptian god of wisdom. The ibis-headed god garbed in an Egyptian kilt. In his right hand, Thoth did indeed hold the fabled Emerald Tablet.
“All in all, a rather brazen depiction,” Caedmon remarked after a lengthy silence. “Not only is it a public declaration that Thoth authored the Emerald Tablet, but the sculpture intimates that he gave the relic to mankind, conferring upon them the gift of divine knowledge.”
“And that divine knowledge, aka the hidden stream of knowledge, is at the heart of creation.” Edie wasn’t so much surprised by the image as the fact that it’d been placed in the open for everyone to see. “Brazen is right. Nothing sub rosa about this.”
“Indeed.” Caedmon reverently moved his hand over the raised bronze surface. Aladdin polishing the oil lamp. “While the inclusion of the Emerald Tablet on the bas-relief is notable, the sculpture is even more remarkable for what isn’t depicted.”
Her head jerked. “You mean something’s missing?”
“Thoth is almost always depicted with an ankh grasped in one hand and a was held in the other,” he informed her. “In ancient Egypt, the ankh, sometimes referred to as the key of the Nile, symbolized life. While the was, a type of wand or rod, symbolized power. I’m troubled by the fact that those two attributes are missing. They should be here.”
“So, what are you saying, that we need to find the AWOL attributes?”
“Possibly.” Frowning, he cocked his head to one side as though trying to come at the problem from a different angle.
Now it was Edie’s turn to be baffled. “But I thought we were searching for the All-Seeing Eye, not an ankh or was. The deciphered anagram read ‘Biblicil aten stone to Gods eye do not err,’ ” she reminded him, wondering if the Thoth sculpture was a fluke rather than a bona fide signpost.
“These doors face due west.” Caedmon executed a slow one eighty, turning away from the austerity of the annex to face the Library of Congress across the street. A massive and ornate edifice that resembled an elaborate wedding cake. “Blast. I can’t see a thing. The colossus completely obscures the western horizon.”
“Not to worry. I can tell you exactly what’s on the other side of the building. First, there’s the Capitol grounds, where you have trolling police and politicos. And beyond that, you have the Mall. Or Museum Alley, as we used to call it in the tourist industry. And having once been an industry insider, I know there isn’t an ankh or was to be had.”
Caedmon made no reply. Instead, he grabbed her hand and set off in the direction of East Capitol Street. Making her think that he hadn’t heard a word she just said. When they reached the corner, he came to a halt. Morning rush-hour traffic was hectic, the streets congested, the sidewalks packed with worker bees late for the hive.
Releasing her hand, he raised his arm and pointed due west; to a familiar object at the far end of the Mall, more than a mile and a half away. “I just located one of Thoth’s missing attributes. Behold the was!”
Edie stared at the western horizon. “You’re kidding, right? That’s the Washington Monument.” At 555 feet, the white marble spire was the tallest structure in Washington. And, as she knew from her tour guide stint, it had the distinction of being the tallest stone structure in the world. Most locals took the odd edifice for granted. Herself included.
“That is an Egyptian obelisk,” Caedmon informed her, blue eyes excitedly gleaming. “A petrified ray of the god Aten made manifest in stone. Moreover the obelisk is where the Radiant Aten dwells as he illuminates his creation.”
She glanced back at the doors on the Adams Annex, trying to make the connection between the bronze bas-relief and the white marble monument. “And Thoth’s true power, symbolized by the was, is the illumination gained through the knowledge inscribed on the Emerald Tablet that describes the secret of Aten’s creation.” She shook her head, worried that Caedmon had veered off course. “I don’t mean to harp, but what does the Washington Monument have to do with the All-Seeing Eye?”
“Fix your gaze upon the top of the monument. What do you see?”
Edie obediently slid her gaze up the tall, gently tapered structure. “I see. . . . Ohmygosh! I see a triangle! Just like the triangle that encloses the All-Seeing Eye,” she exclaimed, the pyramidal top of the monument triangular in shape. “The Washington Monument does symbolize the All-Seeing Eye of Aten who dwells within the obelisk!”
“Thus the obelisk harkens to the power of the Radiant Aten who, in turn, bestows his power upon Thoth the Thrice Great.”
“Behold the was.” Realizing the implication of that, her enth
usiasm instantly waned, Edie wishing she hadn’t made the connection. “So, what are you saying, that the Emerald Tablet is hidden inside the Washington Monument?”
CHAPTER 71
Unnerved, Edie glanced over her shoulder.
“We’re perfectly safe,” Caedmon said reassuringly, taking hold of her elbow as he steered her around a boisterous tour group.
The Yoshino cherry trees around the Tidal Basin were in graceful full bloom, which meant the Mall was jam-packed with the spillover crowds. A grand expanse of manicured grass framed with impressive shade trees, the Mall was arguably one of the most famous pedestrian thoroughfares in the world.
Despite Caedmon’s assurance, Edie couldn’t belay the niggling fear that something malevolent lurked in the shadows. Watching their every move.
“Need I remind you that we spent last night at the Willard Hotel because you didn’t think it was safe to sleep at the house?”
“It’s not safe.” Pronouncement made, Caedmon gestured to the gleaming spire at the end of the Mall. “You mentioned that Thomas Jefferson was instrumental in selecting the site for the new capital city and overseeing the early construction. Did he have a hand in erecting the Washington Monument?”
Given the overly phallic monument, the question begged a bawdy retort. Instead, Edie played it straight and said, “While Jefferson selected the location for the monument, the actual construction didn’t begin until 1848. I’m guessing that Franklin, Jefferson, and Adams figured out where they wanted to leave their signposts but left the installation to later generations. That would explain how two of the signposts, the Washington Monument and the Adams Annex, were constructed after the original Triad members had died.”
“While there’s a direct link between Thoth and the obelisk, we still don’t know if the Washington Monument is actually a signpost,” Caedmon said, taking a more measured approach. “What about John Adams? Other than the fact that the Library of Congress annex building is named after him, he seems rather peripheral to the tale.”