He let himself out the sliding door onto a large mahogany deck overlooking the water and peered out at the dock. A gray bass boat, its raised fishing seat mounted on the front and outboard motor protruding off the rear ruining its otherwise sleek lines, bobbed in the early morning mist. His uncle would not be happy to learn it had been stolen and driven to Canada.
Cam found the boat key hanging on a hook near the sliding door, attached to a starfish-shaped wedge of Styrofoam designed to float in case someone dropped the key overboard. “Amanda, do you have any old keys with you?”
She dug through her purse and handed him her ring.
He held up a small copper-colored one that approximated the size of the boat key. “Is this replaceable?”
She shrugged. “It fits the padlock on my gym locker.”
He switched the two keys, leaving Amanda’s hanging on the hook attached to the starfish. “I don’t want them to notice the key is missing. I want them to think someone hot-wired the boat.”
He limped down the back steps, grabbed some life jackets from the shed under the deck and threw them into the boat along with a couple of fishing poles—if they were stopped by the authorities, he at least wanted to have a plausible story that they were out fishing and had inadvertently crossed the border. Fortunately his uncle had left the gas tank almost full. “This didn’t take as long as I thought. Let’s get going. It’ll be chilly on the lake, so we should bundle up a bit.”
“What about the car?” Amanda asked.
“Here’s the plan. I’ll lock the house and stash our packs in the boat. You and Astarte drive back south, toward town. Follow the lake road around the southern tip of the lake until you get to the Eastside restaurant.” He handed her a map. “Park in the parking lot and come out onto the pier. I’ll pick you up in the boat. Then we’ll head north.” He checked his watch. “It’s just after nine. I’ll pick you up in half an hour. Keep your cell phone on.”
She kissed him firmly on the lips. “Make it 45 minutes. Not that Astarte and I don’t trust your fishing skills, but I’m going to fetch some sandwiches for lunch.”
“Grab some worms also.” They would add authenticity to the fishing story.
Astarte crinkled her nose. “Worms?”
Cam grinned. “Of course. They’re delicious on sandwiches.”
Jabil Hayek had been at his Virginia office for two hours already. The only thing he had to be thankful for was that the Friday-after-Thanksgiving traffic allowed for an easy commute. He had spent an uncomfortable Thanksgiving with his ex-wife and her new boyfriend, dodging questions from both her and Farah about college tuition. To make matters worse, Buckner and his team had failed; somehow Amanda Spencer and her fiancé had evaded them and vanished. With the little girl and the Clairvaux Codex no less. He squished his cigarette into the ashtray. Unbelievable.
His foot brushed against an object beneath his desk, which reminded him there was actually a second thing to be thankful for. The Bat Creek Stone, and the skeletal remains excavated with it, sat in a lockbox at his feet thanks to a Thanksgiving-day burglary at the University of Tennessee science center. As high-tech as the spy game had become, sometimes an old-fashioned break-in was just what was needed. Hayek couldn’t bring himself to destroy the objects, and the human bones under his desk gave him the willies, but he didn’t know what else to do with them other than stick them in his wall safe once he had a free minute. Perhaps when this all blew over he could arrange for the artifact and bones to be anonymously returned to the tribe.
He dialed Georgia Johnston’s cell. Yesterday he had briefed her on details of the Clairvaux Codex only because she had threatened to go public with the mission and he wanted to shut her up. He had brought her onto the team because he thought she might be of use after the quarry was captured. Now, with Buckner having failed, she might be their best hope.
He didn’t bother with pleasantries. “I know you’re up to something, Georgia. What is it?” The agency had tracking devices in all its agents’ cars; he received a written report twice a day with a summary of all movements.
She didn’t miss a beat. “You’re wrong. I just wanted to get back to my office to check on some sources. I wanted to follow up on this Clairvaux Codex. Besides, I wasn’t doing anyone any good sitting in that hotel room playing den mother.”
“Then why did you spend a half-hour in the middle of the night at the Boston College campus?”
“An old colleague of mine is a professor there. I wanted to pick his brain a bit.”
Hayek let it go with an exasperated sigh. By letting her know he didn’t believe her she would be less likely to follow it up with another lie. “I’m not going to ask you to break any confidences, or even remind you about the consequences of insubordination. But tell me this: If our lovebirds were to contact you, what would you give them for advice?”
She did not hesitate. “I’d tell them to stay on the run. I don’t trust Buckner. I’m not sure if he’s following your orders or if you’re just turning a blind eye, but he wants them dead.”
“He wants them dead because they are a runaway train. Millions are in their path.”
“Perhaps so. But nobody has even bothered to ask them to just pull the emergency brake. Maybe they’d say yes.”
Hayek stared at the phone for a few seconds even after his agent hung up. She had a point.
After picking up Amanda and Astarte, Cam hugged the eastern coast of Lake Memphremagog, his left hand on the steering wheel and his right on the throttle, stopping occasionally to drop a fishing line into the water in case anyone was watching. Eventually he angled his way out to Province Island, a 100-acre landmass separated near its southern tip by the international border. They were not far from his uncle’s house on the opposite shore; he anchored and dropped his line again while Amanda scanned the shore with a pair of binoculars.
“No activity at your uncle’s property.”
He nodded, put the engine back into gear and puttered up the western side of the island into Canada. They waved at an older couple in a canoe and Cam motioned to Astarte and Amanda to hold tight. “I’m going to see how fast we can go, okay Astarte?”
She grinned and nodded, her little face framed by the wide neck brace of the orange life jacket. Cam raced into Canada, angling toward the western shoreline a mile north of his uncle’s camp. He cut obliquely across the waves, keeping the bouncing of the light boat to a minimum—Amanda had cushioned the artifacts and canister as best she could in his pack, and he had further cushioned them with a life jacket in the boat’s bilge, but he didn’t want to damage them. The boat responded to his touch on the throttle and pressure on the steering wheel, a welcome sense of control after days of feeling like a leaf in the wind. They rode silently, the noise of the outboard and the wind making it impossible to talk. Cam extended his leg, keeping his knee straight and elevated to try to control the swelling. At least his head wasn’t throbbing so badly, thanks to a few Advil and a pair of sunglasses to fight the mid-morning glare. Yesterday he felt like a dead man walking; today was more like a man getting over a hangover. As they approached the shore he tapped back the throttle and the boat’s bow sank off its plane.
“So we’re in Canada. What happens next, Cam?”
“Um, I thought we agreed you would call me ‘Captain Cameron’ while I am piloting this vessel.”
Amanda grinned. “Captain Crunch is more like it.”
He feigned disappointment. The few hours sleep while Amanda drove had given him some energy, and being on the lake made him feel elated despite his injuries. “How about you, Astarte, will you call me Captain Cameron?”
A smile crept across her mouth. “Only if you eat one of those worms.”
“Really, that’s all it takes?” He reached into the small jar Amanda had purchased, arched his jaw and dangled a night crawler above his open mouth. A flashback hit him: He had done the same thing to impress a girl a couple of decades ago on this same lake. He dropped the worm into his
mouth and swallowed quickly, fighting back a gag reflex. What the hell.
“Ewww,” Astarte proclaimed, leaning away.
“We’ll not be doing any snogging today, I’m sure,” Amanda said.
“Bummer,” Cam said, smiling. “I had hoped to snog on Memphremagog.”
Amanda rolled her eyes and tossed a worm at him. He shook his head: The worm trick hadn’t worked when he was a teenager either.
Cam and his passengers had navigated their way up the western edge of the lake and were cruising along the shoreline not far from the lake’s northern tip. The tree line along the shore sheltered them from the wind and kept the chop from tossing the boat. “That’s the town of Magog up ahead. Technically it’s not illegal to cross into Canadian waters as long as you don’t actually step on land. So, so far we haven’t broken the law.”
“You mean not today,” Amanda said.
“Good point.” He angled the boat back across the lake, which had narrowed to less than a mile. He kept his speed down—just a young couple and their daughter out for a day on the water, proceeding carefully in the rougher waters of the open part of the lake. “Local legend is there’s a sea serpent in this lake, sort of like the Loch Ness Monster. They call her Memphre.” He kept it light so as not to frighten Astarte. The reality was that the Native Americans refused to swim in the lake out of fear of the serpent. “But she’s a friendly monster.”
“Have you ever seen her?” Astarte asked.
“No, but my uncle knows a guy who swears he saw her one day.” Cam shrugged. “The lake is really deep, so who knows what might live down there.”
He pointed to the far shore. “Up ahead there’s a wooded area with a snowmobile trail that leads to the lake. When we were kids we used to beach our boat and walk to town. Hopefully it’s still there.”
He approached the shore line and handed Amanda the fishing pole. They puttered around for a few minutes, creeping in to shallower waters and the shelter of the trees, until they were sure nobody was watching. “There it is,” Cam said, pointing to a narrow, sandy path between the trees. He cut the engine and coasted onto shore, lifting the outboard before the prop caught in the sand. Scanning the lake a final time, he stepped onto land and dragged the boat up with him. “Okay, all ashore. Welcome to Canada.”
Sitting on the porch swing in the noontime sun, the compound empty after Jefferson’s death and Astarte’s abduction and Judith’s flight, Eliza reread the incendiary text. “The scroll says Templars have Jesus bones. Miss Amanda says Jesus not son of God. This makes me sad. I have been saying my prayers. Bye.” Was it possible? Did the Templars really find the bones of Jesus? Perhaps the girl had it wrong. Or perhaps the Templars only thought they had the bones. It was just too outlandish to be true. She shook her head. She couldn’t take the risk; she had to assume the girl was telling the truth.
The message had come in late last night, apparently when Astarte was alone in bed. Trey had traced the call back to Manhattan and had agents scouring the city. Thank God the little princess remained loyal to her people—the years of indoctrination, of emphasizing the importance of duty and sacrifice over self, had paid off. No doubt the little girl saw herself as Belle in Beauty and the Beast, sacrificing her happiness out of loyalty to her family.
Eliza stared into the woods. It had never occurred to her that the scroll hidden in the Catskills might actually undermine the Book of Mormon. Jefferson had been obsessed with retrieving the ancient scroll because he believed the parchment would somehow validate the sacred Mormon text. And she had no reason to question her brother, which is why Trey’s mission to retrieve and safeguard the scroll was so important.
But important had suddenly become essential: If the scroll was authentic and its contents made public, the entire foundation of Christianity—built on the cornerstone of Jesus’ physical ascendancy to heaven—could crumble. And smack dab in the middle of that rubble, broken and shattered, would lie both the Mormon Church and her family’s dream of Astarte uniting the religions of the world at the foot of her throne.
As if on cue Trey phoned. “We found their hotel, but they left late last night.”
“Curse it.” She sighed. “Any idea where they went?”
“No. They did a good job sanitizing the room before they left. Assuming a 12-hour head start, they could be anywhere in the northeast quadrant of the country.”
“Can you trace Astarte’s cell phone?”
“Only if she uses it again. Have you tried responding to her?”
“I sent a text. But I can’t just call—if they see her talking to me they’ll take away her phone.”
“Well, keep trying. Even a short text should be enough to track.”
“Trey, I don’t need to tell you how important it is to retrieve that scroll.”
“No, you don’t.”
She told him anyhow. “If things blow up, the Christian right-wingers are going to look for a scapegoat. And they’re going to find one in Jefferson. He’s the one who let Pandora out of her box; he’s the one who caused that scroll to be found. And because he was Mormon, they’re going to blame all of us. They’re going to say it was all because the Mormons are obsessed with proving the validity of their precious Book of Mormon. And they’ll be right.” She exhaled. “We have a rare opportunity to win the Presidency, to gain control of the most powerful nation in the world. We may never have that chance again. You must not fail.”
“Like I said, you don’t need to explain. I get it. Loud and clear.”
Astarte lifted her backpack and put it over her shoulder. She had never been in a foreign country; she was surprised it didn’t look any different than the United States. “Are the people in Canada the same as us?”
Miss Amanda smiled and took her hand. They were following a path up from the lake through the woods. Mr. Cameron was limping and using a stick to support himself so they were walking pretty slowly, like Uncle January walked after he got sick. “Some of them speak French, but otherwise they are the same. You’ll meet them when we get to the village, called Magog. From there we’ll board a bus for Montreal.”
“Montreal? How do you spell that?” She didn’t want to confuse Aunt Eliza. Hopefully Miss Amanda and Mr. Cameron wouldn’t be angry with her when they found out she had texted her aunt—she had promised not to call Eliza, so texting wasn’t really a lie. Astarte had been thinking about their conversation before Thanksgiving dinner. Miss Amanda said God was really Mother Earth. And then Mr. Cameron said God and Mother Earth were married. It seemed to her that they were both wrong. Yes, Mother Earth gave life, but that didn’t make her a god. God created everything, including the earth. And how could God be married to something he created? It just didn’t make sense. And if they were wrong about that, they were also wrong about Jesus not being the son of God. Uncle January used to talk to her a lot about people who were good people but who were not good Christians. He said we should love them and try to teach them the error of their ways, but not to be led astray by them. Aunt Eliza, on the other hand, wasn’t a very nice person. But she was a good Christian. And she would know what to do with the scroll Mr. Cameron was carrying in his pack that said Jesus wasn’t really the son of God.
The phone call to Georgia came from Hayek rather than Trey Buckner, who apparently no longer even thought of her as part of his team. “Buckner just called. He’s tracked them to Montreal. He’s in pursuit.”
Georgia was eating lunch in her Cambridge condo while waiting for Amanda and Cam to contact her again. “His team has clearance to operate in Canada?”
“I’m working on it now. If we have to, we’ll get the President to make a call.”
“Why are you telling me?”
“Georgia, you’re still assigned to this mission as far as I’m concerned. A lot of what you said this morning made sense. But I’m not willing to call off Buckner and his hounds—that scroll and those artifacts are too explosive, the risks too high. So you’ve got less than six hours to get up there
and diffuse things before Buckner and his team start throwing their elbows around.”
“They’re driving?”
“Yup. You know Trey. Can’t go on a mission without a trunk full of weapons and gear. Like I said, you have six hours.”
They had hiked to the town of Magog and, less than two hours later, boarded an early-afternoon bus for Montreal. “Okay,” Cam said, “what next?” He sat across the aisle from Amanda, with Astarte in the window seat.
“I think we need to contact Georgia Johnston again,” Amanda said. The bus had Wi-Fi, though the service was sporadic.
“Can we trust her?”
“At some point we might have to risk it. We can’t run forever.”
Had they reached that point? Now that they had crossed into Canada he felt a bit safer—it would be difficult for Trey Buckner and his team to gun down civilians on the streets of Montreal. Maybe they could blend in and disappear for a while. “Let’s wait until we get settled first. I’d like to figure out a way to contact Salazar and see what he thinks.”
“I’m not sure we can trust him either,” Amanda said. “He seemed a bit too willing to leave you hanging on that Zip Line.”
Cam shrugged. After the outburst in the woods when Salazar almost stabbed him, he didn’t doubt it. “Bottom line is we don’t know who we can trust right now.” He patted his pack, containing the Templar scroll. “And our Templar friends are a bit too old to be much help.”
Georgia had grabbed her passport, thrown together an overnight bag and hailed a cab. Within minutes of ending her call to Hayek she raced to Logan Airport, searching the web on her phone for the next flight to Montreal as the taxi sped through Boston. Fortunately traffic was light on the day after Thanksgiving, and her ODNI credentials allowed her to bypass the security lines. She jogged to the Air Canada gate and boarded the plane minutes before its 1:20 departure.
Thief on the Cross: Templar Secrets in America (Templars in America Series Book 2) Page 25