by Sean Salazar
She shook her head, “Not really. The hypothesis of their landings or how they got here is still a mystery. The theory is they followed old Viking route and that’s it.”
Vladimir continued, “Well here is a little-known fact that will tickle you. In Portugal, the Templars were cleared of the charges and simply changed their name to the Knights of Christ. What is interesting about this fact is that ships of the Knights of Christ, including Columbus’ three cruises to the New World, all flew under the familiar Templars red patte cross.”
“That, I am familiar with,” Natalie said.
“Well yes, most people are, but rarely would ask why would Columbus use a Templar flag?” Vladimir continued, “I shall take it one step further. Christopher Columbus may not have been a card-carrying Templar, but was married to the daughter of a high-ranking one and she had access to his secret seafaring maps.”
Alex leaned forward, “Are you suggesting a digging expedition?”
“Most certainly, yes,” Vladimir paused again as more pages could be heard turning. He continued, “I will tell you now that a temple is either buried there or was once there. Therefore, the mystery right now as I see it, is deciphering the Masonic clue as it relates to this gravesite. Before I go any further, is there any way you can excavate the graveyard around the cornerstone?”
“At this late hour,” Ed said. “I would gather to say yes, but in order to hide our presence there the answer would be, not yet.”
“The reason why I am asking is that Masons of the past—specifically the Knights Templar—have routinely hidden secrets in plain sight in and under graveyards.”
“That makes sense,” Natalie said. “Digging up graveyards is generally taboo.”
“So I am asking myself,” Vladimir continued, “what could this secret passage be relating to? If the stone container is in fact the cornerstone of a hidden or past temple, then the search must begin precisely at that spot.” More pages could be heard turning. “Because, I will also proclaim that the Templars have buried treasure there and or near there.”
Natalie put her hand over her mouth. “Treasure they brought over from Europe.”
Ed glanced at the map, and nodded, “Then we shall begin there.”
Vladimir fell silent for a moment and then said, “Getting back to the clues—TEHUTI is an Egyptian god that is also known as Thoth. Now the reign of Thoth according to Manetho reigned for 1,560 years.”
“Huh,” Natalie said.
Alex chimed in, “I see where you’re heading with this.” He glanced at Natalie, “If I recall, Manetho was the designated Egyptian historian around 300BC.”
“Correct,” Vladimir said. “You have to remember that when deciphering Masonic codes, you generally need to go with ancient accounts of history, no matter how extreme it appears.”
“Okay,” Natalie said.
“The divine number of Thoth is 52,” Vladimir continued. “In addition, the number 52 is also coincidentally very close to the Egyptian measurement of a cubit.”
“Oh,” Ed said writing that down.
After a few seconds, Vladimir asked, “Have you deciphered the meaning of Tavnit?”
“It’s a Hebrew word,” Alex answered, “that translates as some type of plan or model of something.”
“Well,” Vladimir said, “whatever it is, if they hid it, it must be very important.”
As Ed drew on the map, he said, “Vladimir, what I am doing is measuring from the center of the cornerstone due north beginning at 360 degrees.”
“Yes,” Vladimir replied, “that is exactly what I would recommend. Then begin your search in various degrees from that point.”
Alex observed Ed doodling and asked, “How far out?”
The sound of Vladimir sighing emanated out of the small speakers, “I would...take...” He paused for a moment, “Take the reign of 1560 years and multiply it by 52.”
Natalie punched the numbers into her cell phone and said, “I’m not following you guys at all but that comes to 81,120, or roughly 2,600 feet for us nonmetric types.”
“Thank you,” Ed said recording the numbers. He did his best to convert the precise location of the cornerstone on the satellite map and then convert the proper distances. He then turned the map, “This is what I am recommending. I created a reference point by aligning the graveyard which looks to be lined up with north and south. Therefore, I took the cornerstone and aligned it up with due north as 360 degrees and drew a circle around it. I then divided it...”
Vladimir interrupted him. “Wait, I just had an idea. Why don’t you also minus the sacred number 52 from 360 degrees which would make it 308 degrees in each direction, and draw a line from there and see what it intersects.”
Ed spent a few moments performing the task. He then leaned into the PDA and said, “Going east, south, and west ends up in flat farmland, but in the northern direction we have a hill, or more accurately a long crest of a hill.” Ed then read to him the coordinates of the cornerstone.
After a brief pause, Vladimir said sternly, “That’s it.”
Alex leaned forward. “And how did you decide that so fast?”
“I’m lost,” Natalie added.
“What, you don’t know?” Vladimir asked sarcastically.
“Enlighten us,” Alex said.
Natalie chimed in and asked, “The Masons always build on high ground?”
Alex turned to Natalie, “So you don’t say.”
She shrugged. “Sorry, I guessed.”
“That’s quite all right,” Alex added, returning his attention to the PDA. “Well?”
“I agree,” Ed said. “I suggest beginning our search in the hills.”
Chapter Thirty-eight
Gap Mills, West Virginia
Wordlessly, Al thumbed through his message from Ed. It was much longer than a typical message relaying instructions and search parameters. He lowered the PDA. “You better turn around. We’re going to have a long night.”
“What now?” Vance asked, slowing down. He pulled into an embankment and flipped a u-turn.
As Vance righted the car back in the direction of the graveyard, Al eyed the dark hill to his right. “Ed thinks there might be something up there.”
“And I suppose he expects us to go up there tonight?”
“Yep.”
Vance drove close to the graveyard and parked on the side of the main road. They each grabbed what tools they could carry including rope and headed up the hill.
Al followed the GPS as close as he could in the dark, through bushes, and up the semi-steep embankment. It wasn’t easy but what was difficult was listening to Vance silently grumble every time he was smacked with a branch or made a misstep.
They made it over the crest and down the embankment into a ravine. Al could make out another hill ahead and rechecked his coordinates. He glanced to the right, “Fifteen feet that way.”
Vance led the way and stopped, “Nothing here.”
Al joined him and knelt down, shining his light to examine the ground. With his hands, he felt the ground which consisted of a soft, spongy layer of leaves and twigs. “You’re right, nothing here.”
“Well, it could be buried, whatever it is.”
Al stood up. “I’m not in the mood for randomly digging holes.”
“How many locations are we checking out?”
Al pointed down the ravine with the light. “Four, on this ridge, and the next spot is about 350 feet that way.” He then led the way, crunching through the bushes. He did his best to stay on track and when he neared the spot he immediately saw the outline of a tombstone blending in with the bushes. It was very old, crumbly, and tilting to the side.
“Ah, shit,” Vance said, moving closer. “We’re digging up another grave?”
Al double-checked his coordinates, “Don’t know. This is not the spot.”
“Oh?”
Al took several steps in different directions while analyzing his GPS coordinates. “We’re about twenty-
five feet off.” He then made his way to the exact spot and kicked the bushes around. There was nothing obvious, but it was dark so missing something obvious could simply be that he just couldn’t see it. He walked back to the tombstone and Vance had finished clearing the bushes from around it.
Vance stood back. “There are Hebrew symbols on the front that Ed might want to see; worn down, but readable.”
Al could sense Vance wasn’t enthused about snooping around another gravesite. Kneeling, he aimed his light at the face of the tombstone and could make out writing. He snapped a picture of the writing and forwarded it to Ed.
Seconds later, a return message read, “By George, that’s it. Start digging.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
After digging for thirty minutes, they both simultaneously hit something solid. Vance wiped his forehead, rested on his shovel and out of breath said, “I respect your wisdom and experience, but I think we are pushing it.”
Al knelt down and brushed off the surface. He quickly found the edges. Was it wood? No, it was metal. “Keep digging,” Al ordered.
Eventually the object appeared to be the size of a large safe or trunk. “This is definitely not a coffin,” said Al.
Vance looked it over. “Doesn’t look like one either.”
“Open it then,” Al prodded.
“Nope,” Vance replied, climbing out of the hole. “Messing with the dead is your department.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Al replied as he aimed his light along the edges looking for a spot to pry open. He handed his shovel to Vance and traded it for the crowbar. He inserted the tool and placed his foot in a crevice, taking his weight off the top, and pulled. Apparently he pulled too hard and the top practically shot off the box, throwing him against the side of the hole.
Vance immediately said, “Shit, I knew it.”
Al pushed himself back up, put his feet on the edge and shot his light inside the container. He was staring at a fully clothed skeleton lying on its side in a fetal position. “Okay, dammit, you were right,” Al said, staring down at the gruesome scene.
“Well,” Vance said smartly, “the position of the body explains the small box.”
The contorted body had short blond hair attached to the skull and was wearing a military-type uniform. Al was not in the mood to search the skeleton but he knew he had to; there was no way Vance was going to do it. He positioned his feet and just as he bent over, he noticed something. “Wait a minute.”
Vance moved his light back and forth across the length of the coffin. “Uh-oh.”
Al knelt closer to the skeleton and used the crowbar to tap the bottom of the coffin. It was soft and cloth-like. He handed the crowbar up to Vance, and with his foot pushed the old frail skeleton out of the way. He then dug his fingers into the bottom of the coffin, grabbing the cloth edge, and pulled. The bones easily rolled up, revealing the edge of a trap door. “I hate to disrespect whoever belonged to these bones, but whatever.” He gave the cloth a good yank, throwing the remaining bones into a pile along the edge and stirring up a cloud of stale-smelling dust.
“Ah, shit,” Vance said, fanning away the dusty air as it floated up to him. He aimed his light on a brass latch, “You were right.”
“Never mess with the big dog,” Al said, tapping the trap door with his foot. It felt solid as solid gets and there was no hole to insert a key, so he slipped his fingers into the latch and pulled. The heavy wood door slowly opened, creaking as it did. Al held the door with his left hand and pointed his light inside the hole. He sighed and said, “Another shaft.”
“Right up your alley, gopher boy,” Vance laughed.
A frail wood ladder attached to the edge went straight down into a black abyss reminding Al of the shaft he found under D.C. “Hand me the shovel,” he said, reaching up. Vance handed it down and Al shoved the handle along the edge of the hole and braced the heavy door upright. Confident the door would hold in place, he crouched down and aimed his light inside. The square shaft was about one-third the size of the heavy door, making it a tight fit even for him. “There is no way your fat ass is fitting in here,” Al said.
“Gosh darn it!” Vance replied sarcastically.
Al pointed his light farther in. “To make matters worse, every inch of the shaft is infiltrated with tree roots, some crossing the length of the shaft.” He sighed, resigned to the fact that he had to go down there. “Okay, I’m going in,” he said, positioning his foot on the ladder to test it with his weight.”
“I’ll be right here,” Vance replied, lighting a cigarette.
It seemed to hold okay, but part of Al hoped it would not so he could postpone his inevitable descent into yet another damn hole.
He used the shovel to chop the nearest roots and then positioned himself to enter the shaft. He took a few steps down and then squeezed in. Once his shoulders were past the edge, he noticed worms embedded into the sides. He shoved the light into his belt and glanced up, “Anything you would like me to pick up for you while I’m gone? There are plenty of worms in here.”
“Beer,” was Vance’s only reply.
“That’s it?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Okay, be right back,” and Al began his descent.
Chapter Forty
Spain
After bouncing for hours along the rough Spanish roads, Betty decided that it was time for her to review what she’d actually stolen from the Vatican. Up to this point, she had been on the run and afraid. Now that she understood what was going on with the imbedded tracking bug, the chase had slightly turned in her favor.
She twisted around, peering out the taxi’s back window for the ten thousandth time to see if another vehicle was following them, and as before, nothing.
She turned back around again. If nothing else, she now felt a little more secure that a sniper was not going to take her out right now, but something she observed nagged at her. The behavior of the men chasing her when she threw the curve ball with the second laptop did not seem right. Her intuition was telling her something else, but what?
She put the thought aside and pulled the case onto her lap, opened it and turned her computer on. Now she knew it could be tracked rather rapidly, so disabling any and all methods it could access the Internet was very important. She cautiously pulled up the Vatican file.
A few things had caught her eye earlier when she sent a section of it to Ed, but she hadn’t had a chance to investigate further. She scrolled to the sections she forwarded, but had the feeling that she missed something important. After a few seconds, she saw it. It was a reference to a date in 1982. She specifically remembered that date because it was the date agent Jess Contreras’ uncle was found hanging from the Blackfriars Bridge in London.
As she read further, it was obvious the event was a larger deal than she had anticipated. It turned out that her uncle, Ricardo Calvino, had uncovered a rift within the Vatican and that seemed to have triggered a chain of peculiar events.
Betty scrolled the file back up, confirming that what she was reading was not the actual Vatican file, but the secret file, and it definitely was. So, the question was, how was it directly under the Vatican’s nose, and were they aware of it? That was a clue she would have to investigate.
She continued reading and translating, and the further she got, the more she realized she now had something rather earth-shattering. It described a detailed account of Ricardo Calvino’s discovery of a gun supply organization within the Vatican backed by a “mysterious group.” The mention of a mysterious group immediately made her suspicious that it might be the Brotherhood. She then scrolled back up to the most recent communication and re-read it.
“Dear God,” she said out loud, wiping her forehead.
The driver’s head perked up and he replied, “Yes?”
“Keep driving,” she said bluntly, returning to her thoughts. Now this was confusing her. Jess’s uncle discovered the Brotherhood had infiltrated the Vatican, threatened to expose it, and was murdered.
But, what has the Vatican done about it? Covered it up? No, that does not make sense unless they truly felt threatened by it.
Betty continued reading and eventually discovered the facts. The Vatican was in fact terrified by what was found and at the very last minute, Pope Paul backed down from any actions. This all happened in 1975 from what she could determine. However, she could not determine what was so damning that would frighten even the Pope?
If it was true that the Brotherhood had infiltrated the Vatican, then she should have some evidence within her database that would at least tangentially confirm it. All she would need was a name or two to begin her search.
She continued reading quietly, despite the bumpy ride. It wasn’t very clear, but she derived that she was reading the long term communications between three people. One name mentioned was Archbishop John Martinovich. Apparently, something was revealed to him back in the Seventies that was much more than the Brotherhood infiltration. There was a mention of gun smuggling, which wasn’t anything earthshaking as far as she was concerned, so what else could it have been?
As she continued reading, she encountered a reference to “the black letter” several times, but no mention of what was in it. She sat back, wondering if she had missed something again. Looking at the electronic size of the file, she knew it would take some time to go over it, which was what she would have to do. Finding a safe hideout, however, was her first priority. She noticed through the night that they were driving through another small town so she leaned forward and asked, “Where are we?”
“Estepona,” he replied.
Watching the town go by through the window she spotted exactly what she needed right now—a Martini bar.
She waited a few minutes and, allowing the driver to continue on for a few blocks, she then asked him to pull over. She paid her tab and watched him happily drive off. Her tab was high enough to give him the rest of the week off but she wanted to be dropped off far enough away so that he wouldn’t know where she was going. She took a few steps back, blended in as a shadow against a dark brick wall, and waited.