The Adept Book 3 The Templar Treasure (2 page)

“Honestly, Nathan, you really shouldn’t have let David Wolfson talk you into having burgundy with the meal. I probably shouldn’t even keep it in the house any more. You know perfectly well what red wine does to your digestion these days!”

Gerard recognized the voice as that of Rachel Fiennes. Her admonition drew a rueful groan from her husband.

“I know, I know,” the intruders heard him say. “I was hoping that just this once—but I’m far more distressed that I made you miss out on the second half of the performance.”

“Don’t give it another thought, my dear,” came Rachel’s amiable reply. “To tell you the truth, I’ve never been all
that
fond of Ibsen anyway. You’d probably better have a couple of your stomach tablets, though. Where are they, in your desk upstairs? All right, you go on into the parlor and sit down, and I’ll go fetch them for you.”

As soft footbeats mounted the stairs, Logan made a dive for the study lamp and switched it off. Catching Gerard by the sleeve, he hurried them both over to the wall on the blind side of the doorway, shrinking back as Mrs. Fiennes drew even with the threshold outside. The porcelain knob turned over with a rattle, and the door swung open.

Light spilling in from the hallway showed up the opened safe and the tumble of books on the desk. Seeing it, Rachel gave a startled gasp and faltered abruptly to a standstill. In the same instant a lithe, dark figure lunged at her from behind the door and grabbed one wrist, jerking her into the room. She had just enough presence of mind to utter a shriek of alarm before her captor dealt her a heavy backhand blow that hurled her bruisingly against the inside wall.

In the parlor below, Nathan started up at the sound of his wife’s scream. He heaved himself up out of his armchair and rushed out into the hall as two men in dark suits and balaclava helmets came thundering down the stairs. Both of them were carrying briefcases, and the taller of the pair was clutching a small wooden box to his chest with one gloved hand. With a sudden, terrible clarity of perception, Nathan recognized it as the box in which he habitually kept the seal he had inherited from his father.

Not thinking of the possible consequences, he snatched his walking stick from the stand by the door and charged forward in a desperate attempt to stop the thieves. The blow he aimed at the man with the box went wide by a whistling inch. Before he could swing again, the second intruder slammed him in the temple with a sharp corner of his briefcase and wrenched the stick from his hand. Even as Nathan recoiled with a cry, instinctively flinging up an arm to the pain, the intruder took an overhead swing with the cane and dealt him a brutal crack across the back of his head.

Red agony exploded inside his skull. With a choked moan, he reeled aside and collided with the stairpost. Before he could catch his balance, the intruder struck him a second blow with the cane and shouldered him roughly out of the way. As Nathan crumpled to the floor, still clinging to the stairpost, he heard their footsteps clattering past him out the door and down the front path.

The throbbing pain in his head was like repeated thrusts from a red-hot dagger. He put a hand to his temple and it came away sticky with blood. Groaning aloud, he made an effort to pull himself up only to slump down again in defeat. All but blind, he sensed movement above him, coming down the stairs, and heard his wife calling his name on a frantic note of inquiry. Clinging to consciousness with all the strength of will he could muster, he gasped out, “Rachel, the Seal! The thieves took the Seal!”

Rachel dropped to her knees beside him. He could hear her sobbing distractedly as she tried to loosen his tie.

“Nathan, be still! Please don’t try to talk!” she begged. “Just stay there and don’t move while I call an ambulance.”

“No, wait!” Sensing she was about to move away from him, he groped for her hand and clung to it. “Rachel, you
must
listen!” he rasped, hoping with all his heart that his strength would hold out long enough to get this vital message across. “Things about the Seal you don’t know . . . dangerous things. It’s
got
to be recovered, at all cost! Call Sir Adam Sinclair and tell him what’s happened. Tell him I’ve got to talk to him. Promise me you’ll call him
tonight
… ”

His hold on awareness was slipping as he spoke. Rachel’s voice came filtered through the haze, tearful and pleading, “I will, Nathan. I’ll
do anything you ask. Just please,
please
lie still and let me go call for help.”

Nathan struggled a moment longer, striving for the strength to reassure her. But this time the darkness won out and overwhelmed him.

Chapter One

“HYPNOTIC AGE
regression,”
said Sir Adam Sinclair, “can be an exceedingly useful diagnostic tool for the psychiatric physician. If we accept that the majority of psychiatric disorders, whether neurotic or psychotic in their intensity, are to some degree rooted in the patient’s personal past, then the value of gaining access to that past becomes immediately apparent. At the very least,” he continued, keenly surveying the youthful upturned faces of his listeners, “hypnotic regression provides for the detailed retrieval and review of a wide range of personal data that might otherwise be inaccessible to the individual concerned, if only through the natural and inevitable clouding of the memory owing to passage of time. At its most useful, regression can provide the very key with which to unlock the shackles of a mind fettered by its own repressions.”

He was lecturing to his regular Monday afternoon class at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital, a mixed bag composed mainly of white-coated junior doctors on their psychiatric rotation but also including two social service workers, a retired university lecturer, and a woman deacon training for chaplaincy in the Episcopal Church. Their expressions reflected a gamut of reactions ranging from sober acknowledgement to skepticism, the latter of which was only to be expected and even encouraged, especially right after lunch.

“Dr. Sinclair,” said a stocky, bespectacled young man sitting in the first row, as he flung up a hand. “I can see the possible usefulness of regressing a patient to an earlier age, but—is it true that you’ve even managed to regress some of your own patients as far back as other previous
lives?”

The question generated a minor stir of excitement. The dashing and elegant Dr. Sinclair had a reputation as something of an adventurer in the field of psychiatric therapy and practice, no doubt enhanced by his occasionally sensational association with Lothian and Borders Police as a psychiatric consultant. Had his audience known the true range of his knowledge and experience in the field now under discussion, the excitement might have turned to amazement, disbelief, and even fear.

Adam smiled indulgently. “It’s certainly been my experience that such regressions are possible,” he acknowledged easily.

His questioner looked astonished to have gotten an affirmative answer.

“Well, did you set out deliberately to induce these past-life regressions?”

“Yes, Mr. Huntley, I did,” Adam said mildly. “And you needn’t look so scandalized. I am certainly not the first hypnotherapist to do so.”

“But—”

“Let’s review a few notable case studies, shall we, and then you can draw your own conclusions,” Adam offered, coming around to sit informally on the front of the desk. His crisply starched white lab coat was open casually over a three-piece navy suit of impeccable cut, with the mellow glint of an antique gold watch-fob swagged across the front of the vest. With his classic good looks and dark hair silvering at the temples, he might have been a media personality rather than the eminent psychiatrist he was.

“I’ll first mention the studies carried out in the seventies by Arnold Bloxham and Joe Keeton,” Adam went on. “Bloxham was able to regress one of his subjects, a woman named Jane Evans, through no fewer than
six
previous lives, including that of a medieval Jewess named Rebecca who was killed in a pogrom that took place in York in 1190. ‘Rebecca’ was able to render a graphic description of the church crypt in which she and her child were trapped and subsequently murdered by the angry mob. After listening to a recording of ‘Rebecca’s’ account, Professor Barrie Dobson of the University of York ventured the opinion that the church most closely answering her description was St. Mary’s Castlegate—except for the fact that the church didn’t have a crypt.”

“I’ve heard of that case,” said a white-coated young woman in the back. “The BBC featured it in a special exploring the possibility of reincarnation.”

“Leave it to the Beeb to waste good airtime on rubbish,” said an intense, sharp-featured young man beside her. “They didn’t take it seriously, did they?”

“Actually, they concluded that the evidence was inconclusive,” his classmate allowed. “Six months later, however, a workman doing some renovation work on the church accidentally broke through into a previously unknown chamber that might well have been a medieval crypt.”

“I remember reading about that in the papers,” said one of the social workers. “Didn’t the chamber, or crypt, or whatever it was, get bricked back up before any archaeologists could come and take a closer look?”

“An unfortunate bureaucratic glitch,” Adam agreed, easing back into the exchange. “Perhaps one day, that part of the investigation will be completed. Nonetheless, the circumstantial evidence would still seem to suggest that Jane Evans, through ‘Rebecca,’ had access to historical information unknown to present-day authorities.”

One of the students in the front row was tapping her pen against her front teeth. “Wasn’t there also an American psychiatrist from Virginia who did a lot of work on spontaneous past-life regressions in very young children?” she asked.

“That’s right,” Adam said. “His name is Dr. Ian Stevenson. His most celebrated case involved a five-year-old Lebanese boy whose people claimed he was the reincarnation of a man called Ibrahim, who had died recently in a neighboring town. When Stevenson examined the boy, he found that the child possessed an inexplicably intimate knowledge of Ibrahim’s personal life; besides exhibiting certain behavioral traits which Ibrahim’s surviving family swore were consistent with those of their deceased relative. Stevenson later published this and other findings under the title
Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation.”

“What a load of bunk!” exclaimed one of the students in the front row. “How can he call himself a serious scientist?”

“I assure you that Stevenson did not use the term lightly,” Adam said mildly. “In his estimation, the evidence was strong enough to constitute a case for speculation, at very least.”

“Evidence for reincarnation . . .” another of his students mused. “Is that what you’re looking for when you attempt to do past-life regressions with your own patients?” she asked bluntly.

“What I’m looking for,” Adam said with a droll smile, “is information that will help me arrive at an effective diagnosis. If the unconscious can allow me access to vital information by couching it in terms of past-life experiences that have bearing on the patient’s present problems, then it behooves me, as a physician, to treat ‘memories’ of these past-life experiences
as if
they were real, and to deal with the patient accordingly. I think that no one would argue that experiences of the mind are any less ‘real’ than experiences of the physical body. Indeed, in some cases, they can be more vivid, as in the instance of phantom limb pain, long after an amputation.”

“But that’s a physiological reaction of damaged nerve-ways,” a young man objected.

“In part, perhaps,” Adam agreed. “But who is to say exactly where the lines are drawn between body, mind, and spirit?”

A striking brunette in the front row rolled her eyes and put down her pen.

“I knew it was only a matter of time before someone came up with one of the
‘S’
words,” she muttered, then glanced at the woman deacon in friendly challenge. “Lorna, care to tell us what the God Squad has to say about spirit, or soul, and the matter of reincarnation?”

“Certainly,” Lorna replied, “though I’m not certain I have any answers. Would you prefer an Eastern or a Western bias?”

“Perhaps you might share both points of view,” Adam said.

“Very well.” As all eyes flicked briefly from Lorna to Adam and back again, she settled herself composedly in her chair, collecting her thoughts. Her very name, Lorna Liu, proclaimed her mixed Scottish and Asian heritage, and her appearance combined the most graceful attributes of both, enhanced by the clerical collar she wore with her conservative grey suit.

“I’d be less than honest if I said I wasn’t impressed with the way the case for reincarnation is being argued,” she said amiably, “but I think it’s time that someone pointed out that the question is not so much a scientific issue as a theological one. Let’s take Buddhism and Christianity, since those are my background. While the two theologies have many views in common, especially with regard to ethics and morality, they differ rather drastically in their respective concepts of personal salvation.”

Seeing that she had the attention of the rest of the room, she went on in the same reflective tone.

“Buddhists believe that the whole material world is nothing but mere illusion
—maya—
and
can only be transcended in most cases at the cost of repeated lifetimes spent in pursuit of personal enlightenment. Sometimes this is visualized as a wheel, escape from which becomes the goal of the enlightened individual.

“Christians, by contrast, believe that matter and spirit are inextricably bound together as a consequence of divine creation, and are likewise simultaneously eligible for redemption—not through some long-drawn refining process of repeated existences, but as a direct consequence of divine atonement through the sacrificial death and resurrection of Christ, the God Incarnate. As a Christian, I must confess I see no logical way of bridging the gap between my religious convictions and the concept of reincarnation as a fact of existence. If anyone else can suggest a means of resolution, I would be very grateful to hear what he or she might have to say.”

Thoughtful silence settled for a few seconds as the rest of the group wrestled with the problem, after which the bespectacled Mr. Huntley said bluntly, “I don’t see how there can be a resolution. One point of view or the other has got to be wrong.”

“If not both,” said the retired lecturer with a touch of skepticism. As all eyes turned to him, he added, “I admit quite freely to being an agnostic, Dr. Sinclair. But whether or not there’s a spiritual dimension to our existence, I find the notion of reincarnation messy and illogical. Where, for example, do souls get stored when they’re not in use? When a given soul attains enlightenment and escapes from the wheel, is another soul immediately created to take its place? If so, who or what determines whether a newly conceived infant receives a virgin soul or one that has been around for a while? If not, will we one day run into a shortage of souls? Do souls get recycled more quickly when there’s a population explosion, as there is at the moment?” He broke off with an ironic gesture of disclaimer.

“Maybe not everyone gets reincarnated,” a new voice said thoughtfully. “Maybe it only happens in special cases.”

Adam glanced toward the speaker and raised an eyebrow.

Avril Peterson’s academic standing might not be the highest in her class, but this was not the first time he had seen her display a flash of intuitive insight.

“Ms. Peterson, I do believe you may have offered us a possible solution to this theological paradox,” he said, his smile warming. Transferring his attention to the group at large, he went on to elucidate.

“Allow me to acquaint you with a possible key to be found in Judaic tradition associated with the Qabalah, which is a body of Jewish mystical doctrine. A very learned friend of mine who is a scholar in such matters once confided to me that a true knowledge of the inner meaning of the Qabalah was not to be acquired through the study of books, but rather through the agency of special ministers whose sacred office it was to transmit ‘the teaching’ from one generation to the next. According to apocalyptic Hebrew legend, mankind was first instructed in the Qabalah by the archangel Metratron, who is legendarily identified as the transfigured Enoch—the man who, according to Genesis, ‘walked with God’ and did not taste death. Metratron is said to have subsequently manifested himself throughout history as various great teachers, including Melchizedek, the priest-king whose encounter with Abraham foreshadows the Eucharist, because he offered bread and wine.

“By more conventional reckoning,” Adam went on, “we might regard Metratron as an archetypal figure—a symbol, if you like, of all others of his kind. There’s a rather fascinating passage at the beginning of the sixth chapter of Genesis which speaks of there being intercourse between ‘giants’—a tantalizing reference to beings apparently inferior to God, but superior to humankind—and the ‘daughters of men.’ The children born of these liaisons are described by the King James Bible as, ‘
mighty men which were of old, men of renown’.

“If we accept that such legends, along with myths and the contents of certain dreams, are expressive of non-empirical truths—truths known to the psyche, but inaccessible by empirical means—then it becomes feasible to consider as a possible vehicle of truth Ms. Peterson’s notion that reincarnation is confined to a selected handful of individuals recruited by the angels and thereafter entrusted with the task of imparting sacred knowledge, generation after generation.

“These individuals thus become bearers of the divine light of truth, in the Promethean sense,” he concluded, “but the lifetime experiences for such individuals might well be likened to the projections thrown off through the apertures of a magic lantern—emanations of light manifested in different places, but derived from the same common source. What is withdrawn at the death of the physical body is the projection, rather than the essence. The light itself continues to burn undiminished, until another aperture opens in the fabric of time.”