Solomon's Throne (13 page)

Mr. Xavier grunted. “
Sim,
I see that. So we are learning more about them, as they are learning about us. But why would they care what is on the laptop? They have the original items.”

“They’ve always known about the letter, and we are speculating that they at least suspected a treasure. But it’s doubtful that they’re flush with cryptographers or intel specialists, especially since it appears that only the abbot knows there’s more than a letter out there. These are monks. Maybe militant monks… A few obviously have some skills, and they know how to get information. But I don’t think they’re a big worldwide group… so we’re going to be stretching them thin, and they’re probably thinking it’s easier to follow us, or steal Rei’s work, than to try to take guys out of the field to do it themselves.”

“I am worried about that word ‘militant,’ Gideon,” Xavier said.

“Yeah… me too. I’ll keep you posted, boss. Good night.” He rung off and looked at Rei.
Yeah, me too.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

T
he taxi dropped the Quinns
at the entrance to the Castle of Good Hope, off Strand Street, at exactly 9:00. The plan was to get there when it opened, take the first guided tour offered in order to get an overall picture of the huge fort, and then explore anything they saw as a potential hiding place. Arriving at the enormous structure, however, was quite discouraging.

“Holy cow… We are never going to be able to look at all of this place! It would take weeks!” Rei stood with her arms stretched out sideways and her head tilted back to look at the flags flying over the entrance.

“Yeah. It’s… wow.” Gideon just shook his head. “It didn’t look so big on Google Earth.”

“Okay. Deep breath.” Rei closed her eyes for a few moments. “So we need some kind of map, like one that shows where things were when the castle was first built. We’ll have to try to eliminate. Or use logic, anyway.”

Gideon took her hand and led the way to the ticket booth. They looked up at the pediment over the entrance.

“Are those Greek gods?” asked Gideon.

“Sure looks like it…Or the Roman equivalent. I can never tell them apart. That would be Poseidon—or Neptune—with the trident. And, hmm. Who had that thing with the snakes around it? Hermes? I think that’s it. So that would be Mercury. Not sure what the deal is with all that stuff in the middle, though.” She pointed to another figure, smaller and flatter than the two gods, who was surrounded by weapons and baskets and what looked like drums. “I don’t know if that’s old enough anyway, but I’m sure Father Eduardo wouldn’t use pagan gods for his landmark.”

They kept going, purchasing their tickets for twenty-eight rand, and getting a map of the layout of the castle. After studying it, they decided they would try the church first, but would need a plan B.

“The de Kat balcony has a lot of carvings and reliefs, but it wasn’t built until 1695. So that’s out.” Rei pointed to the map. “There are five bastions—those five points of the star. They were named for William of Orange’s titles—I guess that was one way to come up with names. So we have Leerdam, Buuren, Catzengellenbogen—wow, that’s a mouthful! Then Nassau and Oranje. This one on the right is Leerdam… This part we’re standing in was a courtyard to protect the citizens if there was a disaster or invasion or something.” She sat down cross legged on the green lawn and spread the map on her lap. Gideon joined her and adjusted his sunglasses.

Rei skimmed the historical section of the brochure. “The entrance was moved just before Father Eduardo came—or maybe in between his visits. It used to be over there, between Burren and Catzengellenbogen. So let’s figure we can rule out both of those sections of wall… And I don’t see him being able to gain entrance into any of the military fortifications or the town’s administrative sections. The forge has been redone and is working now, with demonstrations… But when would he have had access to a forge when the blacksmith wasn’t there? No, the more I think about it, the more I think it would have to be the church. It was a Protestant church, of course, but I think that’s our best shot.” She folded the brochure.

Gideon said, “I say we check out the church, every square inch, inside and out. If we don’t find anything, we go to Lions Head. If we strike out
there
… well, I think we’ll have to come back here and start looking again. You have your stuff?”

Rei nodded. She opened her backpack and took out a sketch pad, a box of watercolors, and a bunch of pencils held together by a rubber band. “I’ll move around and do quick studies while you play the bored husband and look around. I’ll call you back to me every once in awhile, so you have a reason not to go too far afield in the castle. You know what you’re looking for?”

“An X.” He laughed.

“Scoffer…” She stood up and wiped the back of her jeans. “Yes, an X. I think we look first at areas that had original carvings, because it would be easier to hide his mark where there were already things on the stone. Also, it would have to be near something that could be moved, so if it’s a huge sheet of solid rock, I don’t think that’ll be it. Smaller stonework, ledges, stone benches, a dirt floor, that kind of thing…”

She and Gideon had the same thought at that moment. Gideon said, “How are we going to start chiseling the bits out with all these tourists around?”

Rei looked around her, at the two or three dozen people already milling about, and the school groups filing in. “That’s a problem… But Gid, it would have been Father Eduardo’s problem, too. This was a working fort when he was here—it was the hub of the whole town! There were stores, and the church, and the governmental stuff, and the offices of the…” She consulted her brochure. “The Vereenighde Oost-Indische Compagnie.”

“The what?” Gideon didn’t know what she had said, but was pretty sure she’d butchered the pronunciation.

“The VOC. The Dutch East India Company, basically. They ran pretty much everything around here back then. My
point
is, Father Eduardo had to figure out a way to hide his whatever it was in at least as big a crowd as we’re going to have today. So that’s another thing we need to consider—somewhere in or around the church that’s kind of hidden away.”

“We might have to try to figure out how to get locked in here tonight, if we can’t,” Gideon said.

She grimaced. “This says the place is full of the ghosts of those who were tortured in the dungeons…”

Gideon laughed. “Rei! You don’t believe in ghosts!”

“No… but it’d be pretty creepy in here alone at night, just the same.” She took his hand and started toward the church.

They stood at the doorway of the small church. It was fairly dim inside, and there wasn’t much to the outside, as it had been built into the main structure of the castle. Inside there were a few windows on the outer wall, hanging lamps that gave off little light, old wooden pews, and a small altar. Bas relief carvings decorated a good portion of the walls, including behind the altar. There was only one person in the church, an old woman who was sitting with her hands folded in her lap, head down in prayer. There were candles on the altar, but they weren’t lit, and no clergy seemed to be in attendance.

Rei glanced at Gideon, and put her backpack on the last pew. Withdrawing her pad and pencils, she began to move slowly from the rear to the front, up the right side. She gestured to her husband to do the same up the left. She studied all of the carvings carefully, and realized that this was going to be a good deal harder than she had anticipated. While the church had been carefully preserved through the years, and the carvings had never been exposed to rain or the elements, the lighting in the church and the years of people touching the walls made it difficult to discern much detail.

All of the themes were religious, which, of course, made sense. But unlike those in Catholic churches, these did not depict angels and demons, or halos, and most contained regular people and pastoral elements. This meant that there were natural features like grass and trees represented by hash-like marks, many of which could be construed as an X. Rei walked over to Gideon, who looked equally frustrated.

She whispered, “We have to keep assuming Father Eduardo wanted someone to be able to find the clue. These carvings were all here in 1687 or 1688 when he came back. So he didn’t hide his X so well that we’ll think it’s grass. I just can’t believe that.”

“If we find this first one, at least we’ll know what to look for next time. Let’s start over, together,” Gideon whispered back.

Just then, a small group of tourists came noisily in, chatting and gesturing. Rei took a seat sideways on a pew and started drawing the closest relief, while Gideon did his best to look like the long suffering husband and walked towards the altar, looking for an X.

The tourist group left, and the old woman was still sitting in the same position. Rei thought she’d gone to sleep, but she didn’t really want to find out. She put her pad and pencil down quietly on the pew and joined Gideon, who was now on the left side of the altar.

“Anything?” she asked.

“Not yet…Still working on it. But up here would be good, especially behind the altar. The stone and wood blocks the view from the whole chapel, if someone was squatting or sitting down…” Rei looked out over the church and saw he was right.

“Are there any carvings up here? It’s not exactly out where people could appreciate it.”

Gideon slowly moved around the corner. “There are some up here, from the floor to the window. But there’s not a lot of light down low… Do we have a flashlight?”

“I have that little LED light on my keychain, but that would seem kind of suspicious, wouldn’t it?”

“To who?” Gideon stood up and looked out again. Only the old lady, still praying, or sleeping. Must be sleeping, she hadn’t moved at all. “Go get it.”

Rei walked quietly to her backpack on the back pew, and unzipped the front compartment. She withdrew the car keys she’d stashed when they’d left their car in the Heathrow long term parking lot, and unclipped the purple LED flashlight that had been a stocking stuffer from “Santa” the Christmas before. As she was walking back to the front of the church, the woman stirred. Rei stopped dead in her tracks, looking at Gideon in a slight panic.
Chill girl, we’re not doing anything wrong.
She stopped at the pew with her drawing supplies and sat down with them in her lap. The woman gathered her light coat and handbag, smiled to her, rose and left.

Rei hurried to the altar. “Oh my gosh, I’m a mess! I feel like we’re breaking into Fort Knox or something!”

“All we’re doing so far is looking. The breaking comes later, we hope.”

Gideon shined the light on the large carvings along the back wall, and Rei crawled along on the floor, her nose six inches from the images. No one came in to break the quiet, and every sound they made seemed deafening in the still, quiet church. Finally they came to the right corner. Nothing.

“Oh Lord, I’m a wreck. What time is it?” Rei asked, looking at her watch. “We’ve been in here two hours! I’m starving… Let’s go find that restaurant and get some lunch. I think I’m going blind, anyway.”

Gideon helped her up off the stone floor. She groaned as her sore knees straightened and popped.

“Old lady!” he laughed. She punched his arm.

“I’m still your young bride, old man,” she said as she walked back to the pew to gather her belongings.

He joined her and they walked out, blinded by the bright African sunshine as they left the building.

The De Goewerneur Restaurant had a view of Table Mountain, and, best of all, pizza. They got two slices each, and a Coke, and went to a table outside. They chewed, both lost in thought. Finally Gideon spoke.

“OK, so nothing so far. We still have the wall on the right hand side, though. At least it’s a lot more lit along that side, with the windows opposite. I’m not really feeling it, though. How ‘bout you?”

Rei shook her head. “Nope, not really. I think it’s at Lions Head. I was thinking how nervous I was feeling just looking around in there, and I just can’t see Father Eduardo taking the risk. And he wouldn’t have been able to see the church on his first visit, since he was a Jesuit then, so how would he have known there was anywhere in there to leave his clue? The journal seems to indicate he went back to places he’d already been… they barely let Catholics off the boats at all, and certainly not into their Protestant churches.” She took a sip of Coke. “I say we finish looking… we’d feel pretty stupid if it
is
on that right wall after all. But I think the castle is a bust.”

“Yeah. Me too. Well, what else do we have to do in Cape Town anyway, right?” He smiled. Then he remembered the man captured in their suite, now at the police station. “I need to talk to that detective. What was his name again?”