Shadow Ritual (27 page)

“I can’t… I can’t…” His whispered words became a shriek of alarm. “The flesh falls from the bones.”

75

The group stood in silence for a long moment, until Jouhanneau coughed and moved. Everyone stared at him as he sat up without any sign of emotion. He lifted his arms and formed a triangle in front of his lips. He was smiling.

Sol walked over and stood in front of him.

“What is it like to fuse with the gods?”

Sol nodded to his guard, who pushed Marcas and Jade against the wall. Joana stood back.

Jouhanneau was as still as a statue. He didn’t seem any different, but something had changed in his face. His eyes were emanating a dull energy. Marcas had trouble looking at him.

Sol apparently hadn’t noticed. He grabbed the second vial and waved in front of his guinea pig. “Your silence doesn’t matter. The bad side effects of the drug seem quite limited. I, too, will complete my quest in this sacred place, built by pure men who believed in the forces of nature not yet contaminated by the God of the Jews and his bastard son.”

Jouhanneau turned to him. “You know nothing about what is, what was, and what will be,” he said in a toneless voice. “The veil of knowledge will not rise for you.”

“Is that so? We’ll see about that.”

Sol poured the liquid down his throat. He licked his lips, then coughed and closed his eyes. A twisted smile formed on his face.

Marcas and Jade inched closer together.

Seconds later, Sol opened his eyes, grabbed his walking stick, and pointed it at Jouhanneau.

“On your knees, Freemason.”

Jouhanneau’s voice rang out. “No. A free man kneels before no one.”

Sol gave the guard the signal. A shot rang out, echoing in the cave.

Jouhanneau collapsed, clutching his stomach.

“You bastard,” Marcas roared.

Joana pistol-whipped him. Marcas stumbled against the wall. Jade tried to help but her hands were still tied.

Sol stood over Jouhanneau. “I feel an incredible force rising in me, as if I were young again.” His faced was a mask of cruelty. “I am an SS again, marching for the glory of the West. Tell me, Mason, before I do away with you for good, what did you feel? Did you see your God?”

Jouhanneau stared at him.

“You couldn’t understand. I saw myself. That is all.”

“You’re lying, dog.”

Sol raised his stick and brought it down on Jouhanneau’s shoulder.

“No!” Marcas shrieked.

But Jouhanneau did not scream. Sol seemed possessed.

“In prehistoric times, shamans sacrificed animals to win the favor of the gods,” Sol shouted. “It’s all here in the paintings. You’re just an animal. I’m burning up. My strength is taking over.”

He brought the stick down again, this time on Jouhanneau’s neck. Marcas and Jade both struggled to free their hands as Sol shrieked, “Are you going to tell me what you experienced?”

Jouhanneau was lying on the ground, straining to hold his head up. Marcas could tell he was gathering his last bit of strength for the final blow.

“I will die like my father and like my master before him, Hiram. It is an honor. As for you, you could never understand. You must have a pure heart, or…”

The grand archivist stretched out his hand.

“Antoine, my brother. I am not afraid. That is the secret of the shadow ritual. If you knew, Antoine… I crossed through the darkness, and then there was… No, not the Grand Architect, no, just me. I am no longer afraid. Never again.”

Sol was laughing like a madman. He raised the stick the final time and brought it down on Jouhanneau’s skull.

“Why? Why him and all the others?” Marcas cried out. “Why the same way Hiram was killed?”

Sol strode over to him.

“It’s an ancient custom. Nobody knows who devised this blood ritual. The founder of our order, Count von Sebottendorf, called on us to use it. When the Thule chose to become invisible during the rise of Nazism, we decided to send a chilling message. Maybe no one could see us, but we were there, in the shadows. What finer way to demonstrate our secret power than to kill you Masons the same way Hiram was slain? But I’m wasting my time. I have much to do. I’m fulfilling my destiny.”

He staggered and looked drunk. Klaus reached out to support him, but Sol pushed him away. Joana moved toward him too, but the old man spit at her feet.

“It’s nothing. I’m going to sit down now. Take care of those two. I am no longer afraid. That’s what he said. ‘I am no longer afraid.’”

Before anyone could act, Sol keeled over. He twisted on the ground and foamed at the mouth. His voice was filled with anguish, “No! Not them! They’re all around me. Not that! Can you see them? Can you see them? Don’t let them get near me. Get back. I’m an SS officer. You must obey me. No!”

Joana rushed to Sol. His henchman pulled out a gun and pointed it at Marcas and Jade.

Marcas turned to Jade. “I’m sorry,” he said. He shoved her out of the way and closed his eyes. “I’m no longer afraid.”

A shot rang out, then another. Marcas collapsed on the ground. His last image was Sol writhing nearby, like a rabid beast.

THE ORIENT

76

At the Hospice de la Charité outside Paris, the old man in the padded room suffered day and night. The nurses pitied him. Like a child afraid of the dark, he begged them to keep the lights on. He cycled between uncontrollable anguish and tears of despair, when he would say “I’m sorry” over and over. Even the strongest anti-anxiety medication couldn’t calm him. The psychiatrists had no cure.

The nurses had put him in a straightjacket to make sure he didn’t harm himself.

77

He woke up with his mind muddled and his vision blurry. He blinked. Jade’s face appeared above him.

“Don’t move.”

“Where am I?”

“Safe in Bordeaux, at the Arche-Royale Clinic. You got lucky.”

“I’m thirsty.”

Jade handed him a bottle of mineral water. He poured it down his throat as if he hadn’t had a drink in days. An agreeably cool sensation filled him. He wanted to sit up, but pain shot through his right side.

“I told you not to move. The bullet almost sent you to the beyond. The docs have ordered two weeks of rest in this room and then a month of convalescence.”

“What happened?”

Jade wiped his forehead.

“We owe our lives to your friend Jaigu, as hard as it is for me to say that. Somehow, Darsan found out we were at Lascaux. How do you damned Freemasons always know everything?” she said with a smile.

“Ah, yes. You see, we’re not all bad. When I called my worshipful master to see if we could get into the cave, I gave our code word for danger and let Jaigu’s name slip.”

“Darsan sent Jaigu, since he had been in on the mission from the start. When he got there, he saw us go into the cave with Jouhanneau. He followed and killed Klaus just as he got a bullet off.”

“And Sol?”

“Captured, with Joana. She was transferred to a special-ops prison, where she’s being interrogated for information on Orden and its network. Sol is in a psychiatric hospital.”

“Why?” Marcas said, feeling himself drift away and Jade’s voice become distant.

He fell asleep.

78

O
NE MONTH LATER

The Hospice de la Charité-Dieu had grounds that no gardener had domesticated. Century-old trees spread their branches alongside the building. There were no bars on the windows. Most of the patients were harmless, lost in their silence or their imagination. The real world was little more than a distant memory.

A linden tree, planted when the hospice was built, had branches reaching to the second-floor rooms. In the coolness of evening, the scent of the flowers filled the silent halls. After climbing through the window, a man took a white lab coat out of his bag, put it on, and clipped on a hospital identification badge. Now he just needed to find room 37.

When he did, he smiled at the patient’s name: François Le Guermand. The past always caught up with you. As did Thule with those it had sentenced to death.

79

Antoine Marcas walked into the room just as a nurse was preparing the body to be taken away. The hospital director had immediately informed Darsan, who had contacted Marcas.

The man who had called himself Sol lay on the bed. Marcas could make out his emaciated body under the sheet. His hands were strapped to the sides of the bed. An unpleasant odor was rising from it.

The worker blushed. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I haven’t finished. Are you family?”

“No.”

“You understand. They can’t take care of themselves.”

Marcas nodded. He showed his badge. “Call the head doctor, please,” he said.

The nurse hurried out while Marcas contemplated the former SS officer’s face. It had stiffened into a grimace. His eyes were still open, fixed on the ceiling, as if in terror.

The doctor, a young man, walked into the room.

“What did he die from?”

“Are you familiar with his file?”

“A little bit.”

“The patient suffered from obsessional psychosis due to irreversible brain lesions.”

“What kind of psychosis?”

“Fear, sir.”

The nurse was back. She tried to close the patient’s eyes but couldn’t.

The doctor shrugged. “Some go into death with their eyes open. If we can’t get them closed, we cover them with a headband.”

Marcas went outside. The warm air under the trees felt good. He took out a cigarette, but his hands were trembling.

“You shouldn’t smoke.”

He turned around. Jade was sitting on a bench under the linden tree. Its leaves were rustling in the breeze. Marcas put the pack back in his pocket.

“How did you know I was here?”

“Darsan told me.”

He looked at her, and refrained from asking
why
she was there. He just smiled.

She stood up, and they started walking toward the gate.

“I have a question,” Jade said.

“Yes?”

“What’s the secret of the shadow ritual?”

Marcas’s eyes wandered over the hospital walls.

“The soma takes fear away.”

“Is that all?”

“That’s more than all. We humans are born afraid to leave our mother’s belly, and we die afraid to leave this life. Now just imagine a life without fear. Nothing would hold us back. We’d be absolutely serene. Jouhanneau smiled when Sol killed him. He wasn’t afraid.”

Jade looked at him. “But why didn’t the drug have the same effect on Sol?”

“He didn’t have a pure heart.”

“But…”

“So he suffered. He experienced something he had never felt before: guilt. We all have it in us—the good and the bad. Maybe the true Masonic secret is in the practice of ritual and initiation, in facing yourself through the efforts you make to reach the light. It’s the path, not the destination. All Sol did was try to steal a fix, like a drug addict. He got high on the gods he envisioned—the gods of retribution and anger, and they made him suffer.”

Jade slowed down.

“Would you want to experience it?”

“No, I’m vain enough to think I can continue on the path of knowledge without a drug, no matter how celestial it is. That said, the questions raised by this mixture are astonishing. If sacred and religious experiences are the result of disturbances in the brain caused by external stimuli, then God is simply a drug. Divine light is little more than a neuronal big bang. But…”

“But what?”

“Perhaps this substance really does have the power to put us in touch with something bigger than we are.”

“I actually love it when you get that sententious look. It’s too funny. You chase away the Mason, and he comes running back.”

Marcas laughed.

In front of a newspaper stand, a delivery man was dropping off a shipment of magazines. A gust of wind blew one onto the sidewalk. Marcas stopped it with his foot and picked it up. On the front page were a compass and square, the Freemason symbol.

Revelations

Freemason secrets unveiled

Exclusive interview

Marcas paged through the magazine to the article. “A pharmaceutical startup has announced the launch of a new plant-based antidepressant, Somatox. Makers of the drug claim it will revolutionize the antidepressant landscape.”

Marcas felt like tossing the magazine into a garbage can, but he returned it to the pile where it belonged. Just let it go, he said to himself.

He looked at Jade. “So tell me. Do you still think we’re all a bunch of nasty hoodwinkers?”

“Hmm. Let’s just say, I know now that all the apples aren’t bad.”

“I could introduce you to some more of us. You might actually like a few.”

“Don’t press your luck, Inspector.”

Marcas stopped grinning and took her hand. “I’m so sorry she did this to you.”

“Don’t sweat over it,” Jade said. “I still have nine. And the last time I checked, they were all working. It changes the balance when I shoot, but it’s no big deal.”

She smiled at Marcas again, hardly the hard-as-stone security chief he had met a lifetime ago. She held his hand and intertwined her fingers with his. In the distance, the sun was rising above the deserted street. To the Orient.

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This book is of course a work of fiction but also based on true historical facts. If you want to know more, visit the following page:

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