Brandon’s voice rose. “Wait, he thinks the Vatican is behind this? They’re the mother-fuckers who blew off my leg?”
“Not the Pope himself. Vatican hardliners.”
“It was bad enough when I thought some treasure hunter did it.” Brandon was Catholic, though not particularly observant. “But the friggin’ Church?” His voice tailed off.
“Apparently they’re worried we’re going to find some kind of genealogy that proves this whole Da Vinci Code theory is true.”
“So that’s what this is all about.” He took a deep breath. “Well, whatever they’re trying to hide, you need to find it.”
“We’re trying, buddy.”
His tone remained somber. “Did you say we? Does that mean that chick is still with you?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh.”
Driving around with someone like Amanda probably sounded pretty good to Brandon right now. Even with killers in pursuit. He tried to downplay it. “She’s pretty much stuck in the car with me until we figure this all out. I think she’s getting pretty sick of me. In fact, she may take me out before the Vatican gets another shot at me.”
Amanda rolled her eyes.
“Well, whatever,” Brandon said, exhaling. “Anyway, I’ve got some interesting stuff for you. As much as my dad keeps trying to tell me it’s all bullshit, it’s pretty cool. Even he’s starting to come around.”
“You mean he thinks we’re on the right track?”
“Actually, even more than that. He went down to check out the Newport Tower yesterday. And he’s been carrying around a big book about the Kensington Rune Stone. He thinks there may be something to this Prince Henry stuff.”
“Wow. He’s not easy to convince.”
“Tell me about it. Anyway, I’ve been reading these books from the library. I’m a friggin’ expert in Templar history now. They’re some pretty intense dudes. Did you know they never bathed, never took off their loincloths? And some of these guys were living in the freakin’ desert, sweating their balls off all day.”
“Maybe that’s why they were so feared in battle.”
“Good point,” Brandon chuckled.
“Good to hear you laughing. I know it must be tough.”
“Yeah, well, anyway, do you guys know what this Rex Deus thing is?”
“Amanda told me about it. Something about a bloodline of high priests, traced back to Moses’ brother. In fact, she tells me I’m part of the line myself.”
“You? No way.”
“Really. My mother is a Cohen.”
“Un-fucking-believable. A couple of days ago you were nothing. Now you’ve got the hot girl and the royal blood.” Cam pictured his cousin shaking his head. “Well,” Brandon continued, “did you know that all nine of the original Knights Templar were part of this Rex Deus bloodline?”
Amanda leaned into the phone. “I did not. The organization I work for is obsessed with the Rex Deus line. A number of the members claim to descend from it. They believe it makes them royalty or something.”
Brandon snickered. “Well, the jokes on them. They won’t be so happy when they find out they’re probably also related to old Cam here.”
* * *
After stopping for an early lunch, Cam and Amanda reached Fitchburg around noon. They followed Brandon’s directions to a hotel just off the highway in a wooded area away from the city’s old industrial center.
“I’m not comfortable leaving the car in the parking lot,” he said. “They may think we’re up in Nova Scotia. But from what the Monsignor said, the Legions of Jesus can afford to have surveillance teams all over New England.”
“I agree. I’m not certain it would occur to a group of paramilitary types from Latin America that we’d be at this conference—they probably have never heard of NEARA. But better safe than sorry.”
He drove past the hotel and found an old dirt road. Thankful for the all-wheel drive and dry weather, he navigated along the rutted way and hid the Subaru in the brush. After filling a day pack with supplies they hiked back toward the hotel.
“I don’t want to miss the Eric Forsberg talk,” she said, “but I don’t need to be hanging about all day where some bloat might recognized me.” She pointed at a small shopping plaza. “Why don’t I pick up some supplies. And your TracFone is almost empty of minutes—I’ll look for another.”
He turned to say goodbye and she met him lip-on-lip, pulling him tight to her. A car honked in approval as it drove by. After a few seconds, she pulled away and looked earnestly into his eyes, her hand still on his cheek. “You will not be rid of me quite that easily, Cameron Thorne.” Grinning, she kissed him quickly again. “Very well, then. It’s one o’clock now. Shall we meet at, say, three, at the hotel lobby?”
The NEARA group was sharing the hotel, which was actually more of a conference center, with some kind of dog show so the lobby was filled with well-coiffed dogs and their owners, many of whom looked strikingly similar to their pets. He followed signs to a wing of the structure which contained a series of large rectangular meeting rooms. He gave a false name at the registration table, paid cash and grabbed a program.
There were no presentations scheduled during the lunch break so he wandered to a room where books related to NEARA issues were displayed for sale. He thumbed through a book on the Newport Tower, purchasing it along with one summarizing pre-Columbus exploration in America. As he was paying, a burly man in a leather bomber’s jacket, about Cam’s age, approached. The man’s bangs fell in front of his eyes; he surveyed the room from beneath them with a furtive, nervous shifting of his pupils, leaned in and whispered. “That Newport Tower book is pretty good.”
“Thanks.” He was here to chit-chat, to pick up information. “I’m Stan Jonathan.” The name of an old Boston Bruin hockey player was the first that popped into his head at the registration table.
“Eddie Rice.” They shook hands. “Nice to meet you.”
Cam held out his other book. “What about this one? Any good?”
His new friend peered in. “Yeah, that’s decent too. None of that P.C. crap in there.”
“P.C. crap?”
“Political correctness. You know, glorify the Indians. As if they never killed each other before the Europeans came, never killed any women and children when they raided Colonial villages.” He looked around furtively again and shook his head. “Let’s just make believe the Europeans were the bad guys. It’s all part of the attempt to degrade, and eventually erase, European culture.”
He wasn’t sure if this guy was a kook or if he had information that might be valuable. Or both. “I’m sorry, I’m sort of new to all this. Who is it that wants to degrade European culture?”
“The state of Massachusetts to begin with. Ever wonder why the state spends so much time on Indian digs and never bothers to look into all the pre-Columbus sites?”
He shrugged, inviting more.
“Well, the Indians—excuse me, the Native Americans—are P.C. So let’s focus all our attention on them.”
“But don’t the P.C. people hate Columbus?”
“Yup. An imperialist devil, they say.”
“So wouldn’t they want to look into things like the Westford Knight, maybe find out that someone beat Columbus here by 100 years?”
Eddie nodded knowingly. “At first blush, yes, you would think that. But take it to its logical conclusion: The Scots came here, made friends with the natives, explored, traded a bit, then left. What’s so horrible about all that?”
“Nothing.”
“Exactly. It’s a lot easier to demonize the Europeans when Columbus is the target, not some peace-loving explorers from Scotland. So the P.C. folks don’t want to find evidence of any contact before Columbus. It would ruin their whole message about the evil European imperialists.”
Cam thought about the blinking Rhonda Blank and her acidic reaction to his Westford Knight questions. “And you think the state is part of this whole P.C. conspiracy?”
&
nbsp; The question elicited a sardonic laugh from his new friend. “This state more than any other. I mean, we keep electing Ted Kennedy and Barney Frank—what could be more P.C. than that?”
Massachusetts also recently elected a string of Republican governors, but he was here to listen not debate. “How does the Catholic Church play into all this?”
“Well, the Church and Italy go way back together. They’re pretty happy with the Columbus story. So don’t expect the Vatican to be too interested in any pre-Columbus contact with the New World.”
* * *
After losing his new friend Cam sat down to collect his thoughts. Was it possible the Politically Correct crowd was purposefully blocking investigation into sites like the Westford Knight because it benefited their cause to have the imperialistic Columbus as the figurehead of European exploration? He doubted it. Perhaps, subconsciously, they resisted opening their mind to the idea. But he knew a lot of P.C. folks and most of them would have been fascinated by the thought of a Scottish explorer splashing ashore a hundred years before Columbus. Still, it added a whole new variable to the equation.
He once heard a political commentator describe a hot new political figure as a vessel into which voters poured their hopes and dreams. He was beginning to think of Prince Henry the same way. To the Consortium group and other descendants, his fame and glory ran through their veins, added to their prestige and nobility. To the Scottish people, his explorations were heroic, a source of national pride. To treasure hunters like Alistair McLovick, his travels—and cargo—were the key to untold wealth. To the enemies of the Vatican, the evidence he left behind debunked the teachings of the Church. To angry white men like Eddie Rice, he was ammunition against the Politically Correct crowd.
And to Cam, he held the answer to the mystery of who maimed his cousin, killed his dog and tried to splatter him across the pavement.
* * *
Cam and Amanda slipped into the meeting room just as the presentation began, edging their way along the back wall to a pair of seats in the corner. Wearing thick-rimmed glasses she had picked up on her shopping excursion and her purple-black hair tucked under a Red Sox cap, Amanda slid her seat back so Cam’s body shielded her face from view. Like Amanda, the rectangular room was inconspicuous, just another meeting room in just another conference center someplace in America—off-white accordion partition walls, blue-upholstered metal chairs lined up in neat rows and a faux mahogany lectern topped with a pitcher of ice water and an adjustable microphone.
From behind the lectern, blond-haired Eric Forsberg commanded the room—tall, broad-shouldered, square-jawed, confident. About 40, Cam guessed. In another era he might have been a Viking chief. Today, according to the program, he was a former star college hockey player who worked with a forensic geologist named Scott Wolter. Wolter had carved out an expertise for himself in the field of studying and analyzing construction materials—stone, masonry, concrete—to determine structural soundness and integrity. In other words, if a structure failed—for example, when Boston’s Big Dig tunnel collapsed—Wolter’s company tested it to determine why. As a hobby, Wolter used his state-of-the-art instrumentation to study stone carvings and artifacts. Forsberg had joined Wolter’s company out of college, worked his way up to partner in the firm and now shared Wolter’s interest in stone artifacts.
Forsberg had flown in from Minnesota to discuss the Kensington Rune Stone—specifically, its possible relation to artifacts found in New England. He surveyed his audience, stepped out from behind the lectern and, using a Power Point projection to illustrate his points, explained that the Kensington Rune Stone was a tombstone-size slab inscribed with runic lettering found in Minnesota by a farmer named Olof Ohman in 1898. Long thought to be a hoax, the stone, dated 1362 by the carver, told the tale of a group of Scandinavian explorers who returned from a fishing expedition to their campsite in what is now west-central Minnesota to find 10 of their comrades “red with blood and death.”
[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Kensington_runestone.jpg ]
THE KENSINGTON RUNE STONE
“Our firm was brought in as an outside expert to study the stone, to render a scientific opinion.” he explained. “As most of you probably know, you can’t carbon date a stone because it’s not organic. But you can, at a microscopic level, study the weathering patterns of any carvings or inscriptions. Different minerals in a stone will weather and fade away at different rates.”
He sipped his water. “For us, this was a simple question of logic: Either the carving was a hoax from the late 1800s or it was real. So we studied the stone under laboratory conditions. I won’t bore you with the details of our petrographic analysis but we concluded that the weathering patterns of the minerals in the carved areas of the rock indicated the inscription clearly predates the late 1800s.” He paused, scanned the crowd. “In fact, they predate any modern day European presence in that part of Minnesota. This is a key point: The Rune Stone was carved before modern-day settlers arrived.”
Amanda leaned in. “He’s barely keeping his hair on.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry, he’s nervous.”
“Really? He looks pretty damn calm to me. How can you tell?”
She smiled. “I know men.”
“I bet you do,” he chuckled.
Forsberg continued. “So, again, I’m back to a question of logic: If the farmer Ohman and his contemporaries—who were the first Europeans on the land—didn’t carve the stone, then what are the other possibilities?” He smiled. “Aliens? Divine intervention? Native Americans fluent in the runic language? Of course, the only other possibility, the only logical possibility, is that the stone was carved by a group of Scandinavian explorers just as it says it was.
“In my mind this should have been the end of the debate. But there were still a number of skeptics who questioned our conclusions. Some Scandinavian linguistic experts argued that many of the runes on the stone were not authentic, that they were mistakes made by an amateur hoaxster. Well, I’m a fighter,” he grinned, “and so is Scott Wolter. We don’t like it when people tell us we’re idiots. Especially when we know we’re right. So we found our own expert in runology, a guy from Texas named Dick Nielsen. Again, this is back to simple logic: The petrography—the microscopic analysis of the stone—told us that the Rune Stone carvings were authentic, which meant that the linguistic experts who questioned its authenticity must themselves be mistaken.”
He sipped his water. “The smoking gun in this mystery was the so-called ‘Dotted R’ rune found on the Rune Stone—as the name suggests, the rune is shaped like a capital R with a dot in the middle of the closed loop. When the stone was first discovered nobody had ever seen the Dotted R rune before, which skeptics argued proved the stone was a hoax. But in 1935, Scandinavian scholars found the Dotted R on medieval documents. So, the question becomes, if the experts didn’t know about the Dotted R until 1935, how did it make its way onto the Kensington Rune Stone in 1898?” He surveyed the audience. “The answer, of course, is that it couldn’t have—unless it was put there by a medieval carver. So, rather than proving the rune stone is a hoax, the Dotted R is the smoking gun that proves the carving is a legitimate medieval artifact.”
[Photo courtesy Scott Wolter.]
THE ‘DOTTED R’ RUNE ON THE KENSINGTON RUNE STONE
Forsberg continued. “In addition, the Dotted R provides a crucial clue as to the identity of the carver. Wolter and Nielsen found the Dotted R rune on 14th-century grave slabs in Gotland, an island off the coast of Sweden. This tells us that the stone’s carver likely came from the Gotland area.” He smiled. “Or that the same aliens who came to Minnesota also made a stop in Gotland.”
Forsberg sipped his water again and organized his papers, pausing to allow the audience to digest his point. Amanda leaned closer. “I’ve read his reports on this. To me, it’s an airtight argument—the science and the linguistics both prove the stone is real. But you still get experts who call it a
hoax.”
“Based on what? I mean, is there other evidence he’s not sharing?”
“None that I’ve seen. It reminds me of a comic I read once, I think it was poking fun at the Creationist types, you know, the Bible Belt people. But it applies here as well. It went like this: ‘Step 1. Dig hole in ground. Step 2. Insert head into hole. Step 3. Fill hole with sand, covering head. Step 4. Wonder why vision is impaired.’”
Laughing, his thoughts turned to Rhonda ‘Blinky’ Blank and her refusal to open her eyes to these new discoveries.
Forsberg continued. The reason for his visit to New England, he explained, was that Wolter and Nielsen had identified the same previously-unknown runic letters from the Kensington Rune Stone on the Spirit Pond Rune Stones in Maine. “This is strong evidence linking the two stones to each other and to Gotland. Which is why I came out here to do more analysis on the Spirit Pond stones.” He showed a couple of slides, pointed out the specific runes. Cam understood the gist of the presentation but his brain was now close to full, like a saturated sponge; he pictured droplets of potentially-crucial information dribbling to the ground in his wake as he moved across New England. He turned away from the projection screen for a few seconds and allowed his thoughts to settle and his mind to go blank. The details didn’t matter. What mattered was that Forsberg offered hard proof of late-14th century European exploration of North America. And if it happened once, it stood to reason it had happened multiple times, especially since Minnesota was so far inland.
The echo of doubt that had been sounding in the back of his mind over the past few days—the one that sounded a lot like Peter’s voice proclaiming there was no hard evidence supporting the Westford Knight legend—had been silenced. Forsberg’s case in favor of the Kensington Rune Stone not only opened the door to pre-Columbus exploration, it blew it off the hinges. One of his favorite historical anecdotes was of Paul Revere riding through the Massachusetts countryside pronouncing the British were coming. The Kensington Rune Stone sang a similar song about an earlier group of Europeans.
Cabal of The Westford Knight: Templars at the Newport Tower (Book #1 in the Templars in America Series) Page 19