So he would believe the fourth. “I must keep them in my protection until they are placed in the Breastplate. You can trust nobody else,” he said, “to have the expertise and skill to mount them properly.” There, he said it. Now he would see if Contreras would believe the reason he had hastily cooked up for not simply delivering the gems into his custody. After all, he had been one of the very few that Contreras had entrusted with his entire plan. That’s what it had taken to convince him to be part of it.
The gems he had now in his possession were two of the most famous, the most infamous, in history. The world knew that before he had even met Baltasar Contreras. The world, and Baltasar Contreras, did not know that Jared was a guardian of one of these gems. He was one of the Circle of Seven. For five hundred years, the Circle had vowed to keep the seven legendary gemstones ripped from the Biblical Breastplate of Aaron hidden from man. When Contreras finally revealed his plan to restore the Breastplate, Jared became drunk with the idea that his destiny lay not in preventing the Breastplate from being restored, but in using his elite position to once again open this blessed lifeline to God. He could only pray that he had sobered up in time.
Contreras tented his fingers. “I admire your courage, Jared. The way to the Breastplate is perilous.”
“Courage I would never have known I possessed, Baltasar, without you. Replacing the diamond and sapphire with our manmade replicas was nerve-wracking, certainly, but actually taking the gems out of England–” Even now, the thought of successfully smuggling two of the world’s most important gems into the United States shot Jared through with an unequalled excitement and perverse pride. He had thought of himself as a modern Sir Walter Raleigh, who had emboldened himself with Queen Elizabeth I. Jared had always admired Raleigh’s flamboyant story-telling and penchant for ambition and risk. He couldn’t help but prefer Raleigh’s tall tales that transformed El Dorado into a fabled city of gold over the doom and gloom of Raleigh’s contemporary, Salvatierra, the priest who founded the Circle of Seven to keep man from wielding the power of God. He did not want to remind himself that Raleigh was imprisoned at the Tower of London and beheaded. Jared, as a commoner, would have been hung, drawn and quartered. He swallowed, hard, and wondered if even Raleigh, despite his bravado, had, in the privacy of his cell, dreaded death.
Contreras narrowed his eyes. “It is true that I will need the expertise of a master jeweler as I acquire the other sacred stones and to mount them in the Breastplate,” he said. “I would be honored to have you at my side.” Contreras held out his gray, gloved hand and opened it wide. “Now, let’s see the gems.”
Jared could hardly believe it. Contreras had agreed that he still needed him. He would not be killed, not yet. He was prepared to reveal the stones. His deception was playing out perfectly. He loosened his cravat and pulled the neck pouch from beneath his shirt. He had kept the diamond and sapphire next to his heart the whole time they were in his possession, from his workshop in the Tower of London, on the flight across the Atlantic, here in the Waldorf Hotel. He even wore it when making love with Zoe. He told her jokingly that the pouch was given to him by a medicine man for prowess in bed. It’s working! She would laugh, knowing not to ask more. With the gems in his possession, he’d been as randy as Raleigh.
He opened the drawstrings of the black velvet pouch. He spilled them onto his palm, first the white diamond, then the blue sapphire. Created by violent forces of nature in the dawn of history, rulers throughout the centuries had sought to possess the Kohinoor diamond and Edward’s Sapphire. It was said that he who possessed the Kohinoor would rule the world. And the sapphire had been pivotal in the life of a king who would become a saint. Jared found them mesmerizing, a thing created more in the heights of heaven than the depths of the Earth. And though these gems had caused and again threatened the deaths of many, Jared had never felt so alive.
The blue of the sapphire glowed with such intensity it was as if the sky had been sucked into its heart, leaving behind only gray and gloom for the rest of the world. “Saint Edward’s Sapphire,” he whispered, his breath suddenly short, “named for Edward the Confessor, King of England from 1042 until 1066. It was originally set in his coronation ring.”
Contreras stretched his gloved palm, his fingers wriggling in anticipation, towards Jared. “Nearly a millennium ago,” he acknowledged, “but as I’ve told you, its history is far greater and older than that. The sapphire was gestated deep in the Earth a billion years ago. Thrust to the surface in the extreme heat of magma by the power of nature. Found by man in the alluvial deposits of what is now Sri Lanka.”
Jared knew well the magnificent sapphires that had been mined in the Ratnapura region of that country since King Solomon’s time, ten centuries before Christ walked the Earth. He knew that legendary stones, although often temporarily lost in history, inevitably resurface, heavy with stories of conquest, murder and empires. He could easily accept that Edward’s Sapphire was the one mentioned in the Bible as being set in the Breastplate of Aaron. He had felt it. “King Edward once gave away the sapphire.”
“And so shall you,” Contreras said.
“He was traveling along the road and happened upon a beggar. King Edward had no money, but did not hesitate to take the sapphire ring from his finger and give it to the poor man,” recounted Jared. “Many years later, two English pilgrims had journeyed to the Holy Land. In Syria, they were lost in a violent storm. An old man guided them to shelter. He gave them a sapphire ring to deliver to King Edward. The old man said that he was Saint John the Evangelist and that the King had given him the ring when he had come to Earth disguised as a beggar. He told the men that with the sapphire, they should deliver a message. In six months time, the King would be with God in Heaven. The pilgrims delivered the sapphire to King Edward. Six months later, he died of natural causes.” Jared turned towards Contreras. “Edward gave away this sapphire and received it back with promise of his heavenly reward.”
Contreras frowned and thrust his open palm closer. “And so shall you,” he repeated through clenched teeth. He wriggled his fingers again, as if to spirit the sapphire into them through sheer force of will. Torrino, behind him, stepped forward. Jared doubted it was just to get a closer look. Jared could clearly see the butt of a nasty-looking pistol in Torrino’s shoulder holster. He plucked the sapphire from his palm and placed it into Contreras’s.
Contreras’s thin lips curled up into a smile. He did not remove his gaze from the sapphire as he fished a jeweler’s loupe from his coat pocket and brought it up to his left eye. Jared’s knees weakened. Contreras was no gem expert, but he was no fool either. As he examined the gem, the man’s cheeks flushed. Perspiration beaded on his forehead. Jared half hoped his patron was having a heart attack. He tried to slow his breathing so he wouldn’t suffer the same fate.
Contreras scrutinized the stone’s every facet, turning it this way and that. “You say that even an expert could not divine the difference between the real and synthetic sapphire, Mister Sadler,” he said, “but I would know. Edward’s Sapphire would emit an energy. I am a Contreras. My ancestor before me held the Sapphire. He would reach for me through the ages.”
God help him, he had not fooled Contreras. He couldn’t pull off this last masterstroke of deception. “I, too, felt the Sapphire’s energy,” he ventured, his voice weak, hoping this truth would hide his lie. No matter what, he couldn’t let Contreras have the sacred stones. He’d be responsible for the death of millions, beginning with his own. He had one last, desperate move to make.
CHAPTER 38
“The seventh commandment,” Christa called after Conroy as she hurried to catch up to him. He had already made it out of his basement office and halfway down the dim hallway past the history classrooms to the even gloomier far end. For an old man, he was surprisingly quick and agile. Years of physically demanding field work had paid off. “Thou shall not steal.”
“It is not quite thievery,” said Conroy. “The object did belong to me,
once. I donated it, afraid I’d misplace it, you know. Still, it will probably give the dean the last nail for my retirement coffin. No matter. I remember its connection now, after what you said, Christa.”
Daniel tugged at her shoulder. “We’ve got the map and a copy of Salvatierra’s letter,” he said. “We don’t have time for some wild goose chase.”
“If it were wild geese we were chasing,” said Conroy, “then you could lead us.”
It was Christa’s turn to pull Daniel back. He looked as if he might strike the professor. Conroy led them to a utilitarian gray door. A sign on it read, This door to remain closed at all times. “You know I absolutely had to open it once I’d read that sign,” said Conroy, “if only for the punchline.” He turned the chrome knob and heaved it open with a groan, both from him and the door. He flicked on a switch just inside the door. With a series of bangs, three banks of lights turned on. Bulbs caged in metal sconces lined the walls. They illuminated a wide hallway, hemmed with metal bunkbeds that were stripped bare and pitted with rust. Further on, built-in metal shelves were empty but for three stray boxes of Arm and Hammer baking soda, which looked like they’d been left behind decades ago.
“A bomb shelter,” Christa said. “Then again, if this was survival, I’d consider death a reasonable option. I could never live underground.”
“It’s from a time when people feared that our enemy would take us over by destroying our cities and towns,” said Conroy. “That would have as much value as a door that must remain closed at all times. The next war will be won by infiltration, not annihilation.”
“You’re talking about a bio-weapon,” Daniel said.
“A poison is much more elegant,” said Conroy.
Christa picked up a box of baking soda. It could have dated from the early nineteen-sixties. The label hadn’t changed much, like man’s lust for world domination. “I wonder what Einstein would think of this fallout shelter. He spent his last years here at Princeton. It was his letter to Roosevelt that inspired the Manhattan Project’s race to invent the atomic bomb before the Nazis.”
“The world would be very different if we had lost that race,” said Conroy. He did not need to add what she knew. They, too, had to win the race with evil.
“Einstein’s letter turned into one of his biggest regrets after we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima,” she said.
“But we are racing for the cure, not the weapon,” Conroy said. “And Einstein would have appreciated the fallout shelter’s ultimate use.” He pointed to a folding table surrounded by four metal folding chairs. “The custodians sneak down here for their weekly poker game.” He opened the door at the far end. “And I use it for my private nighttime excursions into the Hershey Room.”
The Hershey Room, one of her favorite escapes. It housed an historian’s dream collection of artifacts from around the world, collected initially by Bonnie Hershey, the adventurous, young widow to the railroad tycoon, Harold Hershey, a Princeton grad from the class of 1865.
They climbed a second flight of stairs and stepped through a heavy fire door into a hallway that was as grand as the one that they left behind in the history building was ordinary. It evoked the air of a gentleman’s library, with dark, wainscoted paneling and well-lit portraits of important-looking men in gilded frames. She could nearly smell their cigars.
Conroy led them through a heavy, carved oak door marked simply, with a gilt-lettered sign, The Harold Hershey Memorial Room. It was dimly lit by the nighttime security sconces, which washed the room in a reddish glow. The mahogany paneling swallowed the scant natural light that slanted through the room’s tall, narrow windows from the gloom outside. The Hershey Room had already been closed for the winter break. Their footsteps echoed loudly in the hush. Christa startled when the radiator banged and hissed awake.
“Harold Hershey was a mason, you know,” said Conroy, pointing to the painting of the room’s benefactor just inside the door. Hershey was seated in a carved wooden chair, dressed in the tuxedo of the era, with a golden pocket watch chain hooked onto his vest button and an expression of barely tolerated patience on his bearded face. Beside him, on a mahogany desk, were glimpses of letters and drawings of the man’s fertile and profitable innovations. Behind him, on the wall, hung the familiar square and compass symbol of the freemasons. “Now, there is a connection for you, Christa. The Bible only describes two of the twelve sacred gemstones on the Breastplate of Aaron by name. They are, of course, Urim and Thummim. The masons teach, in their thirteenth, fourteenth and twenty-first degree ceremonies, that the Urim and Thummim were part of the treasury of Solomon’s Temple.”
Daniel drew alongside Conroy. “Which was destroyed when Jerusalem was sacked by the Babylonians in 586 BC,” he said. “When the Ark of the Covenant, which held the original Ten Commandments, vanished.”
“Along with the Ark’s sister piece, the Breastplate of Aaron,” she said, “that held the Urim and Thummim.”
Conroy nodded. “The Jewish Kabbalistic traditions concur with the freemasons,” he said. “The Urim and Thummim are also significant to the Mormon religion. When the angel Moroni presented Joseph Smith with the golden plates that contained the Book of Mormon, Smith used Urim and Thummim to translate it, thus beginning a new religion.” He led them past cases of illuminated manuscripts, Etruscan pottery and Greek friezes taken from a time when travelling aristocrats paying a pittance for a country’s ancient artifacts was considered fashionable.
“Islam has its own sacred stone,” said Christa, “not of the Breastplate, although their holy stone is connected to the Old Testament. When the faithful make their pilgrimage to Mecca, they go specifically to circle the Black Stone seven times. It is said the God sent the stone from heaven to Adam and Eve, so that it would be the first temple on Earth. And that Mohammad, before he even became a prophet, placed the stone in its spot in Mecca and kissed it.”
“That stone, although black, has a colorful history,” quipped Conroy. “The Black Stone has been stolen, ransomed, broken into seven pieces, restored and, indeed, is the focus of the Muslim’s most holy pilgrimage.” He stopped at a case with a small but impressive collection of finely wrought Mesoamerican gold.
“My favorite exhibit,” Christa said. It wasn’t much. The pieces were small, pendants, ear adornments, but they had survived. The conquistadors, in their hubris and lust for gold, had melted down most of these works of art into gold bars for ease of transport back to Spain. She’d been granted hands-on research of the Mesoamerican collection on several occasions, trying to find evidence that proved that the Spaniards destroyed the pieces not because they did not recognize the mastery of the culture’s artisans, but because they did.
“There he is,” said Conroy, a hint of affection in his voice. “El Dorado.”
Daniel nearly muscled her out of the way. He sighed with disappointment. “That is what you brought us in here for?” he asked.
“That,” said Conroy, pointing to the diminutive figurine, “is history.”
“It’s the piece that you got when you were in Colombia as a boy,” said Christa. The piece was simply labeled, Figurine, Colombia, Muisca, 300-1500 AD, followed by a catalog number. Only about two inches tall, the golden man’s round face was adorned with a feathered headdress and hoop earrings half as big as his face. He wore a necklace, loincloth and sandals. Each hand grasped a golden object, speculated to be his tribe’s version of a royal staff and orb. His golden legs were bowed outwards at the knees, as if he was performing a dance. This golden man evoked history clearer than volumes of text.
“This,” said Conroy, “is El Dorado.”
“El Dorado,” she echoed. “Literally translated as the gilded man. The legend began with the Muisca tribe of Colombia. It all started with an eyewitness account of a European, written just one year before Quesada’s catastrophic expedition.”
“Like the Spanish, the Muisca ritualized their coronations,” said Conroy. “Their new ruler was gilded head to foot in gold dust.
The ruler and his top aides gathered a bounty of gold and Emeralds. They brought their tribute to Lake Guatavita. There, they built a raft of rushes and floated to the center of the lake. They tossed a wealth of gold and Emeralds into the waters as a tribute to their heathen god. The water, for the Muisca, lives with a spiritual power.”
“The gilded man dove into the waters,” said Christa, “leaving behind his skin of gold, emerging as the new monarch.”
“That one true account transmuted into a legend of the lost mythical city of gold that enthralled the Spaniards and inspired hundreds of miles of exploration,” Conroy said. “But they kept their blinders on. They weren’t interested in anything except for gold.”
“The archives say this figurine once belonged to a medicine man,” said Christa. “You never told anyone the story of how you acquired it.”
“Jairo’s father gave it to me,” said Conroy, “in the hospital, in gratitude for saving his son’s life from the jaguar. I didn’t want to accept it. He said that it had been passed down through generations of shamans. Even then, I knew the figurine had to have great spiritual significance.” A blush pinked Conroy’s already ruddy cheeks. After all these years, the intensity of the emotion brought on by his memory had not dulled. He cleared his throat. “The El Dorado figurine dangled from a pendant that Jairo’s father wore. The pendant,” he breathed in deeply, “depicted a giant bird of prey.”
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