The Chi Rho Conspiracy

by Rene Fomby

  “I see.” Sam thought about ordering another glass of wine, then thought twice and ordered a Perrier instead. “Okay, since the musical notation gives us the code—or almost all of it, because of the missing blocks—I guess all we have to do now is figure out which document to use to work out the hidden message. Easy peasy.”

  Archie retrieved the document and its folder and shoved them back into his briefcase. “That would seem to be the case, at first, but as it turns out, it appears that the reference document remains at large.”

  “All of the usual suspects have already been interrogated, it seems,” Mehmed explained. “The reference document that’s used most often in these kinds of schemes is the Bible. It’s already broken down into a numerical schema—chapter, verse, word—that maps perfectly into a dictionary code. But the problem here is, which Bible? No two Bibles from that era are even close to identical, and the first Gutenberg Bible wasn’t printed until ten years after the Rosslyn Chapel was completed. Plus, the codes from the ceiling don’t map into the chapter and verse methodology. The numbers just don’t line up right.”

  Archie nodded. “The next logical document would be St. Bernard’s Liber ad milites templi de laude novae militia, the ‘Book to the Knights of the Temple, in praise of the new knighthood.’ That was a letter spelling out the rules of the new order, the Templar Knights, and was almost as sacred to them as the Bible.”

  “St. Bernard? You mean like the dog?” Sam asked.

  “No,” Mehmed answered, smiling. “St. Bernard of Clairvaux was a French abbot and the primary reformer of the Cistercian order. More importantly, he had the ears of popes and kings, and in particular King Baldwin II of Jerusalem. Baldwin urged him to throw his support behind a new religious order, the fratres Templarii, a group that had sprung up in the Holy Land, dedicated to poverty and the defense of Christendom’s greatest shrines. At the Council of Troyes in 1129, Bernard met with Hugues de Payens, founder of the Templars, and agreed to press the other members of the Council to lend their support to the order. It’s important to understand that the idea of armed soldiers for Christ was unprecedented at the time. While it’s true that Pope Urban II had triggered the First Crusade, those Christian soldiers that fought against the Muslim armies were soldiers first and Christians second—they held no official roles in the Church itself. The Templars, in contrast, were officially ordained soldier monks, and Bernard’s arguments for the Pope granting them his official blessing marked the birth of the Christian theory of ‘just war,’ violence in the pursuit of peace. As for the knights themselves, Bernard explained that a Templar Knight …” Mehmed paused to get the memory right. “A Templar Knight ‘is truly a fearless knight, and secure on every side, for his soul is protected by the armor of faith, just as his body is protected by the armor of steel. He is thus doubly-armed, and need fear neither demons nor men.’ In the end, that argument won over the other members of the Council, and ten years later even Pope Innocent II came on board, issuing the papal bull Omne Datum Optimum, giving the Templars unheard-of power. The Knights could pass freely through any border, paid no taxes, and were subject to no one’s authority other than the Pope himself.”

  “And so it was that the Templars looked to Bernard as their spiritual leader,” Archie explained. “As a result, when he wrote his famous letter to them, outlining what it meant to be a Templar Knight and defining the spiritual limitations and expectations of the new order, they took the letter quite literally as Holy Gospel. Orders from none other than their God in the Highest. And that is why the letter has been scrutinized more than any other document in existence as a possible reference document for the Rosslyn code.”

  “Okay, and did it turn up anything?” Sam asked.

  “Yes, but nothing at all useful,” Archie said. “They ran the code against the letter millions of times, using extremely powerful supercomputers to check every possible variation, and filling in the missing cubes with all possible combinations of values. And all they got back in the end were two nonsensical phrases. Something that translates roughly into ‘tree hand’ in Latin. And another snippet, just as bad—the three letters C-A-R, plus the Latin word past, which means the same thing in English as it does in Latin. So, nothing but gibberish.”

  “There was a conference on the subject about a year ago in Paris,” Mehmed chimed in. “That was where I first met Archie, here, who has a scholarly interest in many of the same subject areas I focus on. Essentially, the outtake from the conference was that the researchers had checked every known document that existed at the time the chapel was built against the Rosslyn code, but couldn’t find a single message that made any sense. They even cross-checked the code itself, to make sure the music theorists hadn’t made some big mistake. And they hadn’t. That leaves us, then, with just two assumptions—either this isn’t really a code, or the reference document itself has been lost to history. But still, you have to ask yourself, why would the Earl of Rosslyn go to all that trouble and expense to embed a code into the ceiling, using an obscure reference document as the key to deciphering the message? And how is it believable that those cubes are just random ornamentation, when everything else in the chapel was so meticulously planned out and implemented?” Mehmed shrugged. “I guess we may never know.”

  “What a shame,” Sam intoned, checking her watch. “But, I guess, that leaves us now with nothing to show for our troubles. Other than yet another secret passageway in the Templar’s fortress to intrigue the tourists. Look, I hate to leave great company, but it’s been a long day, and the wine is starting to make me a bit sleepy. Plus, I have a meeting with an FBI agent in the morning over breakfast, so I think I’ll just head back to the hotel. You guys want a ride back?”

  “Not just yet,” Archie answered, carefully studying his wine glass. “I’m feeling a bit slumped at the moment. I think I’ll have another drink and people watch a little longer. It may have been a long day for you, Sam, but for me it’s been a very long and winding road. A road that’s now come to a sudden and disappointing dead end.”

  Mehmed pushed his chair back. “I’ll join you, Sam. I’ve got some work to catch up on before my flight back to Ankara tomorrow morning.”

  “Super. My rental car’s parked about a block away, just down the street.” She leaned over to shake Archie’s hand as she rose to leave. “I can’t really say it’s been a pleasure, under the circumstances, but it has been a real pleasure getting to know you. I hope our paths cross again someday.”

  “I hope so, too, Ms. Tulley,” Archie answered with a smile. “And if anything turns up in the future as to any of this, I’ll be sure to let you know.”

  “Thanks, Sir Archibald. I’d greatly appreciate that.”

  Sam and Mehmed maneuvered through the tightly-packed tables to the front of the restaurant and out onto the cobblestone roadway, already heating up in the harsh summer sun. As they started across the street toward her car, Sam noticed a young mother standing on the sidewalk just on the other side of the street, pushing a covered baby tram while holding on tightly to the hand of a toddler, a boy who seemed intensely curious about anything and everything they passed. The mother was wearing an oversized pair of sunglasses.

  “Oh my gosh!” Sam exclaimed, patting the top of her head. “I forgot and left my sunglasses back in the restaurant.”

  “I’ll get them for you,” Mehmed offered, already turning to head back.

  “No, no, I’ll take care of it.” Sam pulled her key fob for the rental car out of her purse. “Here, I’ll unlock the car for you. I’ll only be a second.”

  Looking down, she pressed the unlock button.

  And the force of the blast wave crushed her against the side of a delivery van, twenty feet away.

  87

  Akko

  Light was flooding into the room, making it almost painful for Sam to open her eyes. She was lying mostly on her left side, and her right arm felt funny, like someone was holding onto it with a tightly clenche
d fist. She tried to raise up, but that only made what little she could see—out of the slits she somehow managed to painfully squeeze open—swirl around her dangerously, and her head started to pound, furiously, so she slumped back down.

  “Hey, Sleeping Beauty! I thought you’d never wake up!”

  The voice came from directly behind her, a voice that sounded vaguely familiar.

  “No, no, Sam. Don’t move. I’ll come around to your side.”

  She blinked, then blinked again, and the haze started to clear a little. There was motion off in the direction of her feet, and then, suddenly, a face. She knew him—

  “It’s Gavin, Sam. Gavin Larson. So good to see you back in the world of the living.”

  Gavin. She thought back. Gavin, from—

  “I must say, Sam Tulley, as an FBI agent I’ve had people pull some pretty amazing stunts to try and duck out on meeting up with me, but this takes the cake.”

  “What—what happ—”

  Gavin placed a light hand on her arm. “There was a bombing, four days ago. Someone, we don’t know who as yet, someone placed a car bomb in your rental car, and it went off when you and your friend were just approaching it. Prematurely, it seems, which is a good thing. If either of you had been just a few feet closer—”

  Now it all came flooding back. The restaurant. Mehmed and Archie.

  “Mehmed?” she asked, not at all certain she wanted to hear the answer.

  “He’s just down the hall,” Gavin explained. “He’s in much worse shape than you, but he’s still alive, and the doctors say he’ll be okay. Apparently, he had turned around just before the blast, so luckily he caught the brunt of it across his back, and was thrown about thirty feet or so through the air. He wound up landing on some outdoor tables at a café across the street, which helped to break his fall. But he ended up with two broken legs, broken ribs, and some minor internal injuries. He’ll be in here at least another week or so.”

  Sam realized she had been holding her breath, and let it out suddenly in a long sigh. Mehmed—she could see him, turning around to face her. They were talking, something about … something left behind in the restaurant. Then chaos, and blackness. Yes, yes, it was about … her sunglasses, something about that. Sam thought back to the last thing she could remember. There was a young mother, with a boy, and a baby carriage. And the mother was wearing sunglasses. “Gavin,” she croaked out. “The woman, a mother, with two children—”

  There was no way Gavin could think of to sugarcoat the news. “I’m afraid they didn’t make it, Sam. And there are a dozen or so other people dealing with various shades of injuries just down the hall from us, along with Mehmed. But—still alive, thank God.”

  Sam could still see the face of the young mother in her mind, one hand clinging tightly to her small son. As if instead she was holding on to one last desperate hope that she could somehow shield him from what was about to happen. Shield him from all the horrible uncertainties of life, the awful reality that all too often forces its way into our lives and crushes our dreams. She could see the mom’s other hand, reaching out, guiding the carriage and its precious cargo precariously across the broken cobblestones of the centuries-old roadway. Then, in an instant, the woman’s face changed, and suddenly Sam was staring at herself. Her heart sank into her stomach.

  “It should have been me. It’s all my fault. All of it. I did it. I killed them,” she whispered.

  “What—” Gavin protested. “No, Sam, no. It wasn’t your fault. Somebody else did this to them.”

  “No, Gavin. It was me. Vivienne, Tomas, that young girl and her two children, they all died because of me. Everywhere I go, I bring nothing but misery and sadness. And death. It’s like I’m stricken with some horrible, virulent plague that only I’m immune to. I’m the black death.”

  “No. No. You’re the victim, too, Sam,” Gavin assured her. “You can’t blame yourself just because someone wants you dead, and others wind up getting swept up along the way in the wave of hatred and violence …”

  Sam shook her head. “But, Gavin, does it really matter whether you’re the bomb, or just the fuse? Is it the point of the arrow that kills, or the shaft that delivered it? Or the bowstring that sent the arrow on its path? All I know is, at least five people are dead now because I lived.” Sam paused to stare for a brief moment at her right arm, wrapped in some kind of bandage from her wrist to well above her elbow. “And for what? To save a stupid business? Am I doing this for Maddie, or for myself? And if it’s for Maddie, am I sure I’m doing the right thing, locking her into a lifetime chained to seven hundred years of duty, to a family name I didn’t even care about a year ago?” She rubbed her forehead wearily with her left, free palm. “And you should see them, falling all over themselves to make sure she notices. Pandering to a four-year-old child, for God’s sake. Is that normal? Is that any way to raise a child? No wonder Luke kept all of that from me. I can see it now. He wasn’t trying to hide anything from me, he just wanted to protect me. And protect little Maddie. From all the vultures. And now he’s gone and can’t protect us anymore, and the vultures have come home to roost—”

  Gavin’s FBI training had never prepared him for dealing with this kind of thing. His job was to interrogate, not console. He couldn’t arrest a shattered soul, couldn’t slap handcuffs on a broken heart. And deep in his own heart he understood all too well what Sam must be feeling right then. The same total exhaustion, the same sense of complete and consummate failure he had felt at Vivienne’s funeral, still less than one year ago. “Look, you’re just tired, Sam. And your injuries. The drugs. You just need a little rest, that’s all.”

  “Rest is all I’ve been doing for four days now,” she reminded him. “But yeah, you’re right. I’m tired,” Sam agreed. “Tired of all of it. All I want to do right now is grab Maddie and take her home. Grab some inner tubes and float down the Comal River with not a single soul in sight but the two of us, Maddie and me. You know, you don’t need a billion euros to rent an inner tube. Just a few bucks a tube, and the river’s free. That’s what life’s all about, Gavin. None of this bullshit. Just a cold river, a hot summer’s day, and not a single worry in the world. That’s what I really want for Maddie. What I really want for the both of us. Instead, I’ve turned into Shiva, the bringer of death, destroyer of worlds, and I just can’t seem to find a way out—”

  A voice sprang up off to her right, startling her, a voice that had been so quiet up to now she hadn’t even known anyone else was in the room. Sam turned that way just as a pretty young woman stepped into the light in front of them.

  “I got this, cowboy,” the stranger said, setting one hip gently on the bed. “Hi, Sam. I’m Andrea Patterson, Andy for short. I’m working with Gavin on a little project right now. Sorry if I scared you.”

  “No, that’s quite all right,” Sam said, stealing a quick glance back toward Gavin for reassurance. “So, you’re FBI?”

  “Something similar,” Andy replied. “Our departments are working together. It’s a long story …”

  “Right.” Sam sensed something passing between Andy and Gavin, something in the way he watched her carefully as she was talking, hanging on to her every word. She peeked down at his left hand, and noticed that the thick gold band he had worn when they had first met was now missing.

  Andy seemed to be hesitating about something, then, finally, she squeezed her eyes shut and leaned forward a bit. “Samantha, I think I might understand a little about what you’re feeling these days.” She opened her eyes, catching Sam’s, her face now soft and tender, her bottom lip quivering just a little, almost unseen. “When I was seventeen, my family lived in Twin Creeks, Montana, just east of Missoula. I was smitten at the time with a boy who lived up near Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, but came to stay in Missoula every summer to help his grandfather out with the family ranch. My parents didn’t much approve of Frank or his family, for reasons they weren’t all that willing to share with me. So we had th
is little Romeo and Juliet thing going on, which was probably one of the biggest reasons I was attracted to him, to be honest. Anyway, one Saturday there was a movie playing in the city, and I arranged with Frank to meet up with him there. To see the movie, or most likely to just troll the mall together. The problem was, my little brother wanted to see that movie, too, and my parents insisted I bring him along. Wrecking all my plans with Frank. I tried to back out at the last minute, but Tommy was all geared up to see the movie, so I got stuck driving him to Missoula.”

  Andy’s voice had now softened to a whisper, her eyes watching her hands, her right thumb slowly rubbing the top of her left hand. “The trip out there was uneventful, and I couldn’t really hang out with Frank with my bratty little brother in tow. So we watched the movie, Tommy and me, and then grabbed a burger and headed back home. Just outside of Twin Creeks is a place right next to the Blackfoot River where the road bends sharply to the north, and a smaller road, Rainbow Bend Drive, connects up to it from the south. Just as we got to Rainbow Bend, a pickup truck lurched onto the highway and turned our way, into our lane, head on. I yanked the steering wheel hard to the left, aiming for the next lane to miss him, but as I did he yanked his wheel, too.” She stopped to wipe away a tear that was slipping down her left cheek. “I woke up in the hospital several days later. It was weeks before I could walk again, so I missed Tommy’s funeral. And it was years before I stopped blaming myself for yanking that steering wheel. If I hadn’t, if I had just let things be, we never would have hit that truck. And Tommy would probably still be alive.”