Moffat's Secret

by J. C. Williams

  “Great. Let me give you a hotel address in London, England. I will be there for a few days.”

  After naming the hotel, Chad said, “Wait. It will be better to send it to Bath.” He told Gaige the hotel name and address.

  They completed the call. Nine hours later, eleven in Boston, six in the morning Jerusalem time, Chad called the Marzipan bakery. He told them a friend was picking up some pastries to ship and could they have him call this number. An hour later, Mandl called and Chad gave him his real request and named a hotel in York.

  Chapter 106

  Archer was packed. He would check luggage this trip. In addition to his clothes, he packed two different screwdrivers, a small hammer, his bug detector, and two sizes of cold chisels used in his excavations.

  He found the location on Google Maps for the area that Acosta told him about. Next, he determined the latitude and longitude, and made his calculations.

  What else? What would he run into in England? Sandy of course. What would he say?

  Chad found a lone cold beer in the fridge, popped it open, and sat down on the floor amidst the file cabinets from Doc. Something nagged at him. Closing his eyes, he went through the last several days. Dallas. Sedona. Hopi mesas. It was something Jonathan Ahote said about Doc.

  Beer. Doc didn’t drink beer because of a medical condition. Chad looked over at one of the file drawers. It contained some personal files of Doc. Files Chad didn’t ask for nor wanted to see. Among them were his doctor visits and tests.

  With a forgive-me-for-snooping sigh, he opened the drawer.

  Ten minutes later, he came across a diagnosis. Twenty years ago by the date. It was simply stated – patient’s headaches, skin flushes, dizziness, and nasal congestion is a beer allergy.

  The notes that Doc wrote and stapled to it explained it could be the malt, the hops, the yeast, or the type of grain. The notes also said no problem with breads. The doctor wrote under the diagnosis that the patient could try different beers to find one that did not cause a reaction. Also, the patient could try malted milk to determine if it was the malt.

  The last note from the doctor under the printed heading of Recommended Treatment was evidently based on years and years of education and experience – Cut out the beer.

  From what Chad and Jonathan Ahote knew of Doc’s drinking habits, he did cut out beer.

  If Doc had beer that night in the pub, it might mean he was dizzy and not drugged. Yet, why would he have had beer? He knew what it might do to him.

  Part Four

  The Race

  Chapter 107

  Archer landed in London. He retrieved his luggage, went through customs, stopped in the men’s room and switched IDs. He left the secure area long enough to check his luggage. Then he flew to York and rented a car with the new ID. Chad Archer had a reservation in London at the hotel he gave to Gaige. That was in case someone was listening. Electronic records would show that Dr. Archer cancelled that reservation and made one for Bath – the second hotel he gave to Mandl. His pursuers might wonder how he would get to Bath. There was no rental car reserved in the name of Dr. Archer. They would suspect he took a train. No ticket record. By tomorrow morning they would realize Dr. Archer had dropped off the grid.

  It worked. It worked for all but one pursuer. Lupa wasn’t about to lose him as she had in Dallas. During his brief stopover in Boston, she had broken in his house and placed two small, dime sized, remote activated chips into two separate unused pockets inside his backpack. She activated one of them now. When Archer checked in for his next flight and re-entered security, she followed and saw his destination was York.

  Two hours later, Archer walked into the lobby of the Charles House Inn in York.

  “Can I help you?” the desk clerk asked.

  Before Chad could answer a voice to his right said, “Dr. Archer. It’s nice to have you back. How is Dr. Clark’s daughter doing?”

  Chad turned to see the manager who had been so helpful on his last trip.

  “Hello. She is doing fine. Moving on. We all are. I’m trying to do that myself,” Chad began. “I’m retracing Dr. Clark’s trip to England.”

  “That’s a nice way to process through it,” the manager said taking over from the clerk. “You made a reservation?” He started to look through the computer.

  “I didn’t. I didn’t know how I would feel about staying here. I wouldn’t know until I came into the lobby.”

  “How do you feel then?”

  “Okay. If you have a room, I’d like to stay. I wonder if Doc’s room is available? Room 302.”

  “I’ll check. How many nights?”

  “Just one, thank you. Can I pay in cash?” Maybe he could keep his electronic footprint quiet.

  “Certainly, we can do that. Oh, and a package arrived for you today. From Jerusalem.”

  Once inside the room, Archer went immediately to the vent covers in the room. One looked like the screws had been loosened. He stood on a chair, and opened the vent. Excited as a kid at Christmas, he reached in and felt the edges of a book.

  He pulled it out. Doc’s third journal.

  He started at the end, with Doc’s last day. It began:

  I’ll tell B tonight. I figured out what is on the tablets. I don’t think H has any intention of sharing it with the world. He feels he is omnipotent and the sole decider of its use. Chad will be here tomorrow. If the locator stone is to be found, he will be able to do it. I have clues and information. Data points that he uses for his Forensic History. If anyone can solve Moffat’s Secret, Chad can. I can’t wait to share with him my Reflections on the subject. Ha, ha.

  That was Doc, Archer thought. His best quality, his best character trait, was universal sharing. Chad wondered what brought Doc to his conclusion about Haskin. If Doc had seen Haskin’s artifact room, he would have been angry, incensed even. It also sounded like Doc was going to confront Boyer the night he died. Did he get the chance? That was Doc’s character flaw, if he had one, speaking out at the wrong time.

  Doc also knew of Moffat’s Secret. When did he find that out? What was so funny?

  Chad spent the next three hours reading. He followed Doc’s travels through Israel with Gaige Mandl and to Mexico with Juan Ramirez. The journal contained a few pages of Doc’s travels through Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona. Doc described it as interesting and bordering on myth, but not evidence. Doc did not know of the rabbi’s brother in France. He also did not meet Lipman, the radio carbon dating technician. There were entries about the maritime museum mission and cracking the latitude and longitude reference.

  Chad’s mentor was a good teacher because he observed people. Some of his early observations were that the rabbi was holding back. He also felt Haskin held back. At first, Doc was enamored with Boyer and his prompt response and meetings to get reports. Then he grew suspicious and finally he outright stated – I don’t trust the man.

  One long entry in the journal was a self-debate after visiting Rendlesham Forest. His research yielded the same things Chad had found out, a purported binary code communication.

  Chad and Doc had been alike in their view of visitors from other solar systems. As scientists, they allowed for the possibility of other life and worlds in the universe. However, as archeologists they had not seen irrefutable evidence of aliens.

  In his journal, Doc referenced what the rabbi had told him about the purported remnants of the first tablets, the lines and circles. It could be binary code, he wrote. Doc also wrestled with the need for writing down commandments that could more easily be passed on as oral instructions. Doc even suggested that the Ark was devised to hide the tablets from the people. He stated that nowhere in an eight hundred year history of their existence, before the disappearance in 600 BCE, was there a record that anyone saw or read the tablets. Doc thought that there would have been some periodic viewing and a reading ritual.

  Doc finally concluded the stones held a code. He suggested that it was a code for communication. What it was, wh
en it was to be used, how it was to be used, and with whom, he admitted he didn’t know. Accepting this, Doc reasoned with himself it meant that he accepted there was a very advanced civilization in the universe.

  Chad admitted that the various stories he heard on this quest, from Israel, to the Maya, to the Hopi had lent credence for some level of interaction with visitors. Maybe even as a creation theory.

  Doc felt that Haskin wanted to possess the tablets and use them for his own gain. He wanted to be the one to establish communication with another world. Haskin wants to claim that credit, and the power that came with the credit.

  Chad agreed with Doc. Haskin would not share.

  Doc considered the catastrophe that would result if a claim were made that the tablets were found and they contained a code, not the Commandments. Would it upend the Jewish, Christian, and Islam belief in an omnipotent god? Those three groups make up half the world. Certainly some would call it a hoax. Would it cause a mass exodus from those organized monotheistic religions? Other religions that do not believe in a god and that don’t rely on life after death may become more popular. Hinduism and Buddhism, for example. Would there be a major world shake-up?

  Chad remembered seeing surveys that said half of Americans believe we have been visited. There were similar surveys in other countries where anywhere from twenty-five to fifty percent of the world’s population believe in extraterrestrials. Maybe codes instead of commandments would not shake the religious foundation of half the world, as much as Doc thought.

  If the tablets were communication codes to another intelligence, it does not negate a God that created a Universe, including alien beings. The greatest concern, Chad thought, would be if communication was established and we find out we were created by visitors altering a DNA, their own or that of some primitive beings. That revelation would be counter to both natural evolution and monotheistic creation theory.

  Chad put aside these thoughts.

  One thing absent in Doc’s journal was any mention of other forces looking for the tablets. No guardians. No Aman. No dead bodies.

  Doc learned about Moffat’s Secret during his many weeks in York. The local legend came up in interviews. Several of which took place in pubs. Doc was in York exploring the possibility of the locator stone being housed at a place of worship. York Minster was the tenth church visited.

  Archer wanted to call Sandy and share his excitement. He started to dial and stopped. Still filled with a need to share, he called Julie instead.

  “Jules, it’s Chad. How are you?”

  “You sound up,” she said. “I’m glad you called. Two days until the election. I’m so nervous. Why are you so happy?”

  “Later on that. What do the polls say?”

  “Up by eight points.”

  “That’s a lock.”

  “I know. I think it is, too. But nobody is saying that. They don’t want to jinx it. Even local and state news are running stories of other elections that were thought to be over until election night and the second place candidate ended up winning.”

  “Scary, huh?” he asked.

  “It is. What’s happening with you?”

  “I found your dad’s third journal. He hid it in his room here in York. There are some very interesting things in it.”

  Chad stopped suddenly. What if Julie’s place or phone was bugged? He was about to tell her what was in the journal.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Something just came up. I have to go. But, I’m close to a major clue. Sometime in the next few days. I’ll call you election night. Hey, the best of luck even though you don’t need it.”

  They hung up. Chad realized that if anyone was listening they now knew he was not in Bath, where he was supposed to be. Damn.

  He felt like a beer. Why not? He took his notes and the journals with him and returned to the pub where Henry last drank. It was not very crowded this weekday evening. There was no match on television. He ordered a beer. Then he remembered Doc’s allergy and that Doc didn’t drink beer. The drug couldn’t be in the beer. It had to be in his whiskey.

  Frantically, Chad looked back through the notes from the pub. What did the bartenders say? Doc had a whiskey. The man in the suit, that was Boyer, ordered him a second whiskey. Did Boyer drug Doc? Chad tallied up all the facts about that night in the pub including a what-if Doc confronted Boyer.

  Forensic history, thought Chad. Forensic history leads to conclusions. Terrible and scary conclusions.

  Chapter 108

  Archer finally got up at three thirty. He felt he hadn’t slept. He worried all night about the Aman Captain and the phone call to Julie. He kept expecting masked men to come through the door. The sooner he was away the better. It was still dark. It would be that way for another hour. He left through the back door. His car was parked at the side of the hotel. He looked over the lot carefully before stealing through the dark. He drove away, circled the block, then doubled back, making sure he was not followed.

  Two hours later, Chad came to his map marker of one hundred seventy miles north of Stonehenge. There was an eastern road at that point. He passed it by.

  Four miles further, he drove through Buxton. He had a reservation here tomorrow night, under the name Archer. He realized that once he didn’t show at Bath, his pursuers might have come to Buxton, tracking hotel reservation systems. Involuntarily, he ducked down. Another major road went east from Buxton. Chad drove past it.

  At exactly 156 miles north of Stonehenge, Chad turned east on A5012. Chad expected anyone who might know he was using Stonehenge as the reference point, would take the east road he passed fourteen miles to the north. He hoped no one else knew what he knew about the length of a mile. In the late 13th century England began a new mile measurement. Before that, and even for the next two hundred years in construction work, the British were still using the Roman’s units of measurements for length.

  The mile was one thousand paces. When Romans marched, they put a stake into the ground at every thousand paces. A pace was two steps, five feet. A foot was only 11.65 of today’s inches. So the conversion of one hundred seventy miles turns out to be only one hundred fifty six in today’s units. Chad had plotted the best walking path north from Stonehenge. It wasn’t true north, but that would be how Moffat traveled or marked a map.

  Due east from this point would end on the coast at the seaside town of Skegness. There was no straight road to Skegness. The route there would veer, possibly north, possibly south of a fixed east-west direction. Chad’s research showed Skegness was settled by the Danes before 1000 CE. It wasn’t mentioned as a major village until after 1600. It was doubtful that Moffat and his fellow travelers made that their destination. However just four miles north was another seaside village, Ingoldmells, that had a church dedicated to Saint Peter and Saint Paul. That was established in 1200 CE. The town and the church might be a place to hide the locator stone. Nonetheless, Chad thought he needed to investigate the area between his turnoff and the coast.

  The hundred miles in front of him contained many villages, many farms, and many hiding places. He didn’t know what to expect. He started to drive and look for any clue.

  Chad went places like Darley Dale, Chesterfield, and Lincoln, a larger city of a hundred thousand people. He detoured to Mansfield and then back to A5012. He passed crossroad towns like Wragby and Horncastle, where two to three thousand people called home.

  Chad stopped, explored, asked questions, and looked for churches, houses, and other buildings that may have existed in 1360. He had a firm conviction that there would be some sign, some point of recognition. Chad wondered why the guardians wouldn’t stop him, if they already knew the whereabouts of the locator stone. He believed that they lost it, lost the knowledge of where it was that day in 1360 when the group of five left York.

  The day dragged on. He arrived in Skegness late in the day. He took a room at the Best Western and asked for a place to eat. He was directed to a pub just outside the city
called The 900. He took his maps and journals with him. He found it easily having passed it on the way into Skegness. He wished The 900 engraved on two metal plates, mounted into twin stone columns flanking the entrance to the parking lot meant the year 900. He doubted it, but he examined them after parking. No doubt they were old. But even as an archeologist he didn’t know if they had been there for a thousand years or three hundred years. Unless he could take some samples and do some digging.

  His wishful thinking was crushed when he read the menu cover and learned that the pub was only a hundred and fifty years old. Wood beams stood tall and proud supporting more wooden beams that created the roof frame. It was dark, warm, cozy, and friendly. Chad ordered a whiskey and a Shepherd’s Pie.

  Despite feeling relaxed after dinner, he still drove purposely and evasively back to the hotel. No one followed him. He commenced work on the package from Mandl. He made no calls. Three hours later he put his tools away and fell asleep secure and safe.

  Chapter 109

  Archer took the morning to drive back to the west, staying south of his route of yesterday. By midday he had crossed north of his path and turned east again, ending in Ingoldmells. A sleepy town of two thousand, Chad was amused at what they called the holiday caravan parks. He guessed that these collections of rented mobile homes provided some degree of privacy and independence compared to a motel room.

  He found a chip shop down the street from the Church of Saints Peter and Paul. He took his wrapped lunch to the church, deciding to eat and look for clues in the graveyard.

  He thought about Sandy and their first date and the chips she liked. He still couldn’t believe the accusations against her. At first, he admitted it was because he was blinded by his feelings. But now, he knew that the person they described was not in her character. An assassin? No way. He wandered the church’s graveyard and asked himself, so, even if it were true, would it matter?