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The Swagger Sword

Page 15

by David S. Brody


  Cam sat in the back of the car, thumbing through Ruthie’s documents. He had taken a Lyft to Staples to print out Ruthie’s map and documents. He had hoped the map would be simple and clear, a map with a dotted path leading to a red X marking the spot. But that’s not how the secretive Templars operated. The stakes were too high, and their enemies inside the medieval Church too capable and cunning. This would take some time.

  He had the Lyft driver drop him at the visitor center parking lot so he could pick up his Pathfinder and phoned Amanda. “I’m getting my car. I’ve been watching it for twenty minutes, and I don’t see anyone eyeing it. But I’m going to take a roundabout route back to the inn.” He hoped he was doing the right thing. Everything was a balancing act: They needed transportation, but were they being tracked? They needed communication, but were they being monitored? Most fundamentally of all, he wanted to honor Ruthie’s memory by doing the right thing with her map, but by doing so was he putting his family in danger? “If I’m not back in, say, half hour, that means something bad has happened and you should get out of here.”

  “And go where?”

  “At this point, to the police.”

  “Maybe we should go to them now.”

  “And say what? That some guys were following us in Ireland and we think they are still doing so here? That’s not much to go on.”

  “What about Ruthie’s death?”

  “Two of those guys are dead, including the ring leader. And there’s no evidence connecting that to Ireland.”

  “So we have to just wait until they try to kill us also?”

  It was a rhetorical question, he knew, but he also understood Amanda’s anxiety. He exhaled. “Look, I don’t think they wanted to kill Ruthie. She fired the first shots. But okay. I’ll call the cops on Long Island and give them the name of that Garda from Galway, just in case there’s a connection.” He hoped the gesture would placate Amanda. But as he rotated his neck, the memory of the Irish thug’s strong hands around his throat, he wasn’t so sure she wasn’t right to be worried.

  Cam’s words echoed in Amanda’s mind. “That’s the story. Now all we need are the details.” She remained seated at the table by the ocean, staring at the waves crashing onto the rocks beneath the cottage window. They had chosen the private cottage both for its location along the ocean’s edge and because of the seclusion it offered. Astarte was in the shower, leaving Amanda alone with her thoughts.

  They had discussed most of her dream, but not the part about Astarte and Emmy playing hopscotch. Amanda recalled the words of the woman from the farmer’s market, warning that Emmy’s mismatched eyes were the mark of the devil. And Cam had said all they needed to figure out were the details. The obvious clichéd question popped into Amanda’s head: In interpreting this dream, was the devil in the details? And if so, was the devil somehow incarnate in the person of Emmy? She shook the thought away, disappointed in herself for allowing the trauma of the past few days to make her as superstitious and small-minded as the farm stand woman.

  But she couldn’t shake away the image of the looming Brian-like figure in her dream, his eyes mismatched like Emmy’s. Was he, rather than Emmy, the devil? Was that the message her subconscious was trying to send? She sighed and rubbed her face with her hands. It was a dream, after all. Not to be taken literally. But not to be ignored, either.

  Lifting her eyes, she scanned the horizon. Three thousand miles away, just north of due east, the coast of Ireland faced her. South of that, and past the Straits of Gibraltar, Italy extended boot-like into the Mediterranean. Italy appeared as a frequent backdrop in this drama, with many of its key players located there—Marcinkus, the rogue P2 Masonic Lodge, Columbus, the medieval Templars in Seborga, the Vatican. The thing that tied everything together, the common thread, was Archbishop Marcinkus. It always seemed to come back to him. Was there more to be learned about the powerful Vatican banker?

  Amanda dove in, using a Google search to learn as much as she could about Marcinkus. Her eyes widened. 1983. A young girl, the daughter of a Vatican employee, was kidnapped in Vatican City while walking home from a music lesson. She was never found. One prominent theory posited that her father stumbled upon evidence of misdeeds at the corrupt Vatican Bank, headed by Archbishop Marcinkus, and that Marcinkus ordered the girl taken as a way to keep her father quiet. Every few years a new lead in the story appeared, dominating the worldwide news cycle for a day or two before fading back to obscurity. Most recently, in September of 2017, an article appeared in the New York Times detailing a typewritten document, stolen from an armored Vatican cabinet and then leaked to an Italian journalist. The five-page document, entitled, “A summary of expenses sustained by Vatican City State,” was authored by a cardinal and addressed to two archbishops. The document identified the kidnapped girl by name and birthdate and listed a running tab of expenses, totaling 250,000 euro (equivalent to $300,000), incurred by the Vatican for her upkeep and care, including room and board and medical expenses, most of it spent outside of Italy.

  Amanda sat back. Why would the Vatican pay living expenses for a kidnapped girl? There could be only one logical answer: They were somehow responsible for the abduction. Whether they felt a moral obligation to pay her expenses, or were doing so under the threat of blackmail, didn’t matter. That they were doing so at all was a clear admission of guilt.

  Such a tragic story, and still unresolved. Had the girl’s whole life been spent in custody, separated from home and family and country? Isolated and afraid? And all because some corrupt banker didn’t want his wrists to get slapped? And then, perhaps even more damning, did the Vatican continue to keep her tucked away even decades after Marcinkus left Rome, fearing the negative publicity if its role in the kidnapping were to come out? Amanda blinked away a tear. How horrible. A life taken, wasted. For nothing.

  Feeling both her outrage rising and her sorrow spreading, Amanda dove deeper into the abduction. Did Vatican leaders have no shame? She found a picture of the girl, taken shortly before the kidnapping. A pretty face, brown hair, shy smile. The face of a girl loved by her parents, a girl growing into womanhood, a young woman who would probably never have the opportunity to date or love or have children of her own.

  Amanda zoomed in on the picture. What? She gasped.

  One blue eye and one brown eye stared back at her.

  Cam opened the front door of the cottage to find Amanda standing at the threshold, her green eyes afire. Astarte stood a few feet behind in sweats, her hair wet from the shower. Amanda took his hand and pulled him inside. “Are you anxious to see me, or my map?” he joked.

  “The map can wait, Cameron.” She shoved her tablet at him. A girl’s face. “Who does that remind you of?”

  Mismatched eyes. “Emmy, of course.” Why was Amanda so fired up?

  “We call her Emmy.” Amanda held his eyes. “The world knows her as Emanuela. Emanuela Orlandi.” Amanda handed him the tablet. “You can read all about her here.”

  Eyes racing, Cam read about the decades-old kidnapping. He dropped into an arm chair. “Wow. You think that’s our Emmy?”

  Amanda paced the room. “It bloody well has to be. Same eyes. Same name. Same age. Both growing up in Vatican City. Not to mention Brian visiting the farm.”

  Cam nodded slowly. “Yeah, too much for a coincidence. Way too much.” Amanda had the advantage of having had time to process this. “So what happened?”

  She pushed her hair back. “Astarte, tell Dad what you think.”

  Astarte sat on the bed, pulling her socks on. “Maybe she got hurt during the kidnapping. She fell, or tried to escape, and hit her head.”

  Amanda weighed in. “If she was hurt badly, they’d have to bring her to a hospital. Which meant doctors and nurses and paperwork. Which meant the blokes that kidnapped her couldn’t return her to her family because too many people could identify them.”

  Cam nodded again. Even the most hard-hearted Vatican official would rather not let a young girl die on his wa
tch. And it was possible the abduction was only meant as a scare tactic, with the expectation the girl would be returned safely to her family. “So when things went sideways,” he reasoned, “they had to scramble. They whisked her away, set her up in a new life in the Irish countryside, far from Rome.” And, according to the accounting memo, paid her expenses.

  “So Roberto is not really her brother?” Astarte asked.

  Amanda replied, “Likely not. And come to think of it, there’s but a slim family resemblance.”

  Astarte chewed her lip. “Don’t we have to help her? Rescue her?” She stood suddenly. “Maybe the hopscotch chant is some kind of clue. She was really insistent we say it every time.” She murmured, “Two, one, seven, three, Emmy…”

  “You know, that’s not a bad thought,” Amanda interjected. “It could be a clue.”

  “If it is, it’s a clue that’s thousands of miles away,” Cam said. “And we have our own problems right now.”

  Astarte blinked. “But we can’t just … do nothing.”

  “She seems well-cared for, at least,” Amanda said. “And I agree with Dad. We can’t do much from here.” She reached over and took Astarte’s hand. “But I have a feeling that solving this Templar treasure mystery will allow us to figure out what really happened to Emmy. Then we can try to help reunite her with her family.”

  Astarte gently removed her hand. “Maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe figuring out what really happened to Emmy can help us find the treasure.”

  “Okay, we need to make a plan,” Cam said, still shaking his head at the revelation that Emmy had been kidnapped. They sat at the table in the cottage alcove, all three chairs arranged to allow for a view of the ocean. “We can’t stay here much longer.”

  Amanda nodded. “I agree. But we need to figure out this Emmy mystery and also Ruthie’s map.” She checked her watch. “It’s just past nine. Let’s take an hour, then pack up and hit the road.”

  Astarte said, “I want to research Emmy’s kidnapping.”

  “And I’ll help you with the map,” Amanda said.

  Cam spread some papers on the table, the morning sun bathing them in a bright light. “There’s a poem also, which obviously is some kind of clue. And then some of Ruthie’s notes.”

  “Let’s ignore the notes,” Amanda said, one knee on a chair as she stood and peered down, “and try to figure it out ourselves first.”

  “Okay. Here’s the map. It’s in French, and I’m pretty sure it depicts Narragansett Bay.” They examined it together. The dots were smaller islands, and the spot where the horizontal and vertical lines intersected near the bottom was just east of Newport, which was located on the southern part of the larger Aquidneck Island. He had expected something to be marked in or around Newport, but there didn’t appear to be anything flagged in that area. He angled his head. “Ruthie left this for me for a reason. She thought it was important.”

  “This is from the Templar journal, right?” Amanda asked.

  Cam shook his head. “No. Based on what Ruthie told me, the map was found with the journal, but it was a separate document. So it could have been added later.” He took a deep breath. “Let’s look at it piece by piece.”

  Amanda sat back. “To start, those straight lines look like latitude and longitude.”

  Cam translated the Roman numerals, beginning with the horizontal lines. “The bottom latitude line says 41 degrees, 27 minutes. So about 41.5 degrees. That’s pretty accurate for Newport. And the one at the top is 42 degrees. That’s the border between Rhode Island and Massachusetts. Again, accurate.” His eyes flicked between Ruthie’s map and the one on his phone. He pointed to the vertical line. “But the longitude is off. It says 73 and change, but it should be 71 and change.”

  “Not surprising,” Amanda said. “It’s an old French map. I’d wager they were using Paris as the prime meridian, not Greenwich.”

  Cam nodded. “Of course.” He looked up the difference in degrees between Paris and Greenwich and did the math in his head. “That’s it. It’s spot on using a Paris prime meridian.”

  “Does that mean it’s medieval?” Astarte asked.

  Cam bit his lip. “Actually, not.” As much as he wanted it to be, the history didn’t support a medieval origin. “People didn’t start using the Paris meridian until the 1600s. During medieval times most Europeans used the Canary Islands as the prime meridian.”

  “So this can’t be medieval,” Amanda said.

  “Which make sense. Look at the detail of the coastline and rivers. Even if the Templars were here in medieval times, this map is too finely drawn. It’s too accurate.”

  “Wait. There was something in Zena Halpern’s book.” Amanda did a search on her Kindle. “Here it is,” she said excitedly. “A letter from 1657 talking about a group of Templar descendants from France crossing the Atlantic and exploring the mountains north of New Amsterdam.” New Amsterdam was the Colonial name for Manhattan, meaning those mountains were the Catskills. “There was a map, written in invisible ink, at the bottom of the letter. The map makes reference to all the known markers on Hunter Mountain, all the things marked on the front blade of the swagger sword—the table rock, the white bird carving, the cave.” She pointed to the map. “And it’s all written in French, just like this map.”

  “I had forgotten about that letter,” Cam said. “And to get to New Amsterdam, they would have had to go right past Newport. Maybe they drew this when they were here in the 1650s.”

  “Seems logical. The dates are correct, the language matches, the Paris meridian makes sense, and the level of detail seems right. Rhode Island was settled in the late 1630s, so by 1657 the coastlines were pretty well-known.”

  “Right. And if it was drawn later, it would have included the political boundaries, the borders between Rhode Island and Massachusetts. So, again, mid-1600s fits.”

  Cam turned back to the map. “Okay. So what else do we have here?” He answered his own question. “The word ‘Wopahog’ is probably a reference to the Wampanoag tribe.” He angled his head. “But that’s not right—the Wampanoag lived further north and east than that. The Narragansett Bay area was Narragansett.”

  “Not always,” Astarte interjected, looking up at the mention of the Native American tribal names. “Before the Europeans arrived, a lot of the Narragansett land was Wampanoag.”

  Cam nodded. Astarte had spent her early years living on a Native American reservation in Connecticut, so she knew her Native American history, especially the New England tribes. “Interesting. I didn’t know that.”

  “And for those who claim these ancient maps are hoaxes,” Amanda added, “it’s a pretty arcane detail for a hoaxster to get correct.” There were always naysayers who dismissed pre-Columbian artifacts and other evidence as hoaxes, though the sheer volume of evidence was beginning to silence even the most arduous traditionalists.

  Cam focused on the last two labels, on a diagonal line near the top of the map. The line terminated along the arc of a semicircle at a point marked with a thick dot. It seemed important. He pointed. “That says ‘La Place.’ Even I know that means the place. But what’s the other word, at the dot? Is it ‘Le Desor’?”

  She shook her head. “That’s not a word. I’m not sure the first letter is a ‘D.’ Maybe it’s an ‘O’ or a ‘U.’” She found a French dictionary on her tablet and tried some variations. “Damn it. I’m not finding anything, Cam.”

  He angled his head. “Maybe that first letter’s not a capital. Not all the words on the map are capitalized.”

  A few seconds passed before Amanda smacked the table with an open palm. “That’s it! It’s a small ‘t’ followed by an ‘r.’ The word is ‘tresor,’ Cam.” She stood and grinned. “‘That’s the French word for treasure. That dot on the map is the treasure place.”

  Energized by their discovery of the word ‘treasure’ on the Ruthie Sanders map, Amanda quickly packed and prepared to leave the seaside inn in Newport.

  “Come on, As
tarte,” Amanda said as Cam loaded the car. “You can tell us what you found about Emmy in the car.”

  “Where are we going?” she asked with a sigh.

  Amanda stopped and studied her daughter. They had been living out of suitcases, often on the run, for almost a week now. It had done wonders to shake Amanda out of her melancholy, but clearly Astarte would have chosen a different end to their holiday—tomorrow night was New Year’s Eve, and Astarte no doubt was hoping to spend it with Raja. “We need to keep on the move, honey. I know you’d rather be with your friends.”

  Astarte took a deep breath as Cam returned for another load. “No. I get it. And it’s silly for me to complain when I think about what Emmy has gone through.” She began to roll her suitcase toward the door. “Wait until you hear what I learned.”

  Amanda and Cam lingered at the threshold of the cottage, as if the secret Astarte was about to reveal should be sheltered inside its walls.

  “So,” the girl began, looking down at her phone, “this information comes from the mistress of an Italian gangster named De Pedis. The mistress says the gangster was hired to kidnap Emmy to keep her father quiet because he had stumbled onto documents showing the Vatican Bank was laundering money for the Mafia. When De Pedis died in 1997, he was buried in a special basilica in the Vatican. The only other people buried there are cardinals and bishops.”

  “So why was this gangster buried there?” Cam asked. “I’m not tracking you.”

  Astarte gave him one of those frustrated teenager looks. “To keep him quiet, Dad. Or his family quiet.”

 

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