The Lafayette Sword (12 page)

42

Present day

Aurora Source to
all Aurora

Weekly update.
Attached, please find Aurora New York's report on the midterm change in spot prices for gold in New York, London, Zurich, and Hong Kong.Spot prices for an ounce of gold have more than tripled. The Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee predicts that the price will rise to $3,000 over the next thr
ee years.

Requesting an emergency Aurora meeting to discuss the reliability of the GATA report. One of the expert advisers was Aurora Zurich. We share his reservations regarding the motivations of this association, which denounces manipulation of gold trading prices. The World Gold Council has declined t
o comment.

Operation Burning Desert.
The mission was a success. The gold bars were transferred to the Kuwaiti Corpo
rate Bank.

Other.
Five gold disks thirty centimeters in diameter were discovered in an Aztec tomb in Mexico. The disks were not included in the inventory of the site, and Professor Antonio Sanchez, the lead archeologist, is suspected of selling them to a Chicago collector. Request authorization to leak the story to the
Washin
gton Post.

Sale at Christie's of a collection of alchemy manuscripts penned by Dom Anthoine-Joseph Pernety, the creator of the Masonic alchemy degree. These manuscripts had been unknown to biographers of the eighteenth-centur
y scholar.

Aurora Paris should follo
w this up.

43

Rue Saint Jacques de la Boucherie

March 21, 1355

J
ehan Arthus, the torturer, was contemplating the wooden crucifix hanging above the hearth. His quest was coming to an end. He had just reached the goal he had pursued for m
any years.

One sentence had opened the door. Jesus had said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” Those words couldn't have been more fitting. The torturer alone, inspired and aided by God, had discovered the full meaning of the words Flore de Cenevières had uttered: “The blade follows the flame of pe
rfection.”

Once again, he didn't feel like sleeping. He wanted to study. When his obligations didn't keep him away all night with some accused who needed to confess before dawn, he stayed at home, in the silence of the night, praying for strength and
knowledge.

His ritual was always the same. After a prayer, he would go down to the cellar, where the Dominicans stocked wood for heating. He would collect a few handfuls of kindling that smelled of pine and then some birch branches that he broke into pieces. Finally, he would feel for just the right roug
h oak log.

He would go back upstairs and build a fire in the hearth, which was big enough to hold an entire family, and then he'd sit down at a small walnut table in the corner, his back to the wall, where he could see both the fire and the
entrance.

On this night he pulled out the darkly bound book from the trunk to his right. Handling it like a poisonous snake, he examined volume. This was Isaac Bensera
de's book.

Flore's final revelations had been
precious.

The torturer looked at the fire. Soon, it would be time to destroy this volume that generations of men had sought, found, and then lost. It was nothing but a book, but according to legend, its illustrations retraced the genesis of the ma
gnum opus.

Jehan Arthus shrugged. It was not the first book of its kind that he had found. They had multiplied since the crusades. All over Europe, people were copying stories in which sulfur and mercury were the alchemical heroes. In these volumes, symbolic colors illuminated roaring dragons and kings pieced by arrows. All of them purported to reveal the secret of transforming ordinary meta
l to gold.

The torturer was convinced that these volumes did nothing but enrich their authors, who shamelessly mixed Scripture with old maid's remedies, and their illustrators, who let their imaginations run wild. The torturer was doing the work of public hygiene by burning these compilations of pure nonsense, which were woven with lies that gave birth to f
alse hope.

Yet all these fantasies stemmed from the same source. Heretics questioned by the Spanish Inquisition had talked about a book—the source of all these impious works:
The Boo
k of Adam.

According to legend, it dated from Adam himself. Banished from the Garden of Eden, he had written down all the marvelous secrets of creation, including the transmutation of gold. Passed from one generation to the next, the book had even survived the gr
eat flood.

Adam's descendants were said to have encapsulated the volume in two stone pillars in order to preserve it forever. For certain cabalists, those pillars were columns in Solomon
's temple.

Jehan made the sign of the cross. How could men believe such rubbish? Rabbis interrogated in Spanish jails said the book disappeared when the Romans destroyed the temple. But with the crusades, relics had appeared by the thousands, and strange books, many said to be exact copies of
The Book of Adam,
f
lourished.

A persistent rumor put the original in the hands of the Order of the Templars—those part-monk, part-warrior knights who built their first temple on the ruins of Solomon
's temple.

Jehan smirked. Men loved fables. How could such a book survive history, from Adam to the great flood and from Solomon and to the Templars? How could it exist even now? This was nothing more than myth and legend forged by worried minds willing to see hidden forces in
any event.

All he had to do was look at the Cathars, who claimed they held the
real
Gospel of Saint John and accused the Catholic Church of falsifying the
original.

And what about the Templars? When the king and the pope had set out to destroy the Order of the Templars, and the arrests had begun, the rebels of the Church cried persecution, as if those blasted knights versed in usury, blasphemy, and sodomy were the guardians of a truth greater than the divinity
of Christ.

Seeing the fire dwindling, Jehan got up and added a log. He poked the embers until they changed from blood red to a luminous yellow—the colo
r of gold.

The torturer pulled himself together. The order of the Temple had been destroyed nearly a half century earlier, and yet it continued to spark imaginations far and wide, right down to that Jew who came over the Pyrenees to be burned at the stake in Paris, all for a book. For
this book.

He had to burn it.
But first…

Jehan opened it to a random page. Golden-faced angels and red letters shone in the firelight. Maybe this was the real
Book of Adam.
Jehan signed himself again and glanced at the entrance—as far as everyone out there was concerned, he didn't know how to read—and then he began on the f
irst page.

44

Grand Orient Masonic Hall

Present day

G
uy Andrivaux fiddled with a pen. His office was perfectly ordered, as a grand secretary's should be—transparent, a few books on the shelves, a desk made of honey-colored wood, and a computer, which was always on. But despite the disciplined calm, he looked
nervous.

“I'll be honest with you. This is happening at a bad time. We're having our congress in two weeks, and these murders are going to attract the kind of attention that we don't need. Have you seen the h
eadlines?”

Marcas glanced at the papers. How could he have missed them? The type was as huge as the message the headlines conveyed: “Double Freemason Murder,” “Bloody Mason Murders,” “Esoteric Killer Steals Lafayet
te Sword.”

“I like this one: ‘Freemason Serial Killer on the Loose.' That'll sell som
e papers.”

“It's not funny, Antoine. Conspiracy theorists are having a heyday. On the radio this morning, some criminologist was hypothesizing that Jack the Ripper was a Freemason. We've got to catch our killer, and
quickly.”

Marcas could feel the weight of responsibility on his shoulders, but now was not the time
to waver.

“I agree. We need to find out who he is and arrest him as quickly as possible. What do you think his motive is? He kills a neophyte and a man in a wheelchair, and then he steals the sword. I can't make out the co
nnection.”

Marcas was feeling a tinge of guilt. He didn't like lying to one of his brothers, but the grand secretary was too involved in Freemason internal affairs. Marcas was wearing his cop hat now, and it was better to listen than
to speak.

“All right. Let's sum things up,” Andrivaux said. “We have two murders. The first is purely incidental, if you ask me—a means, not an end. He killed the neophyte waiting in the chamber because he knew the grand expert would find him and then tell the other brothers, who would leave the temple and head into the
hallway.”

Marcas nodded, even though Andrivaux wasn't recounting the events as they had actually unfolded. It was the chase in the hallway that had drawn the brothers out. The result, however, was the same. All the brothers had gathered in front of the chamber—all e
xcept one.

“Except for Paul de Lambre,” Ma
rcas said.

“Yes. I don't know why he stayed in the temple. Maybe he didn't want to get caught up in the rush. At any rate, he was alone, which is what the kille
r wanted.”

Marcas glanced out the window and saw that the sky, a cloudless blue a few moments earlier, had tu
rned dark.

“And when the killer finished, he went into the museum to steal the sword before disappearing underground,” Andrivaux said. “He's very calculating—killing one in order to kill another. Re
markable.”

“You sound i
mpressed.”

“Not at all. But if we were playing chess, it would be a f
ine move.”

Now that was pure Andrivaux. The man was an adept of reason and reason alone—quick and
efficient.

“So you think his intended victim
was Paul?”

“Come, now. You do too, d
on't you?”

Marcas turned away from the window and smiled at the grand secretary. Andrivaux continued with h
is theory.

“Inspector, you can't dismiss the connection between the theft and Paul's murder, can you? The Marquis de Lafayette's sword disappears, and his descendant is killed. Have you learned anything from the fla
sh drive?”

“If your theory is correct, he won't kill again,” Marcas said, avoiding the question. “He has what he wants: Paul's eternal silence and the sword belonging to a hero of American inde
pendence.”

“If truth be told, he will be in for a bit of a
surprise.”

“What do
you mean?”

“If he really wants Lafayette's sword, he'll be disappointed.” Andrivaux pulled a photo out of a drawer and put it on his desk. “Look at the museum's sword. Do you notice anything? Do you think a nobleman like the Marquis de Lafayette would travel to the other side of the world to fight the English with a sword l
ike this?”

Marcas examined the photo. “You have
a point.”

“This is a ceremonial sword, not the one he would have taken with him to do battle. Too bad for the killer. And, of course, too bad for us, as we've lost one of the treasures of our museum. Lucky the thief didn't make off with the 1782 Congress of Wilhem
sbad Act.”

“I have to wonder: if he killed for the real Lafayette sword, what will he do when he realizes his
mistake?”

“You think he'll kill again?” Andriv
aux asked.

“We need to find the real sword before he does,” Marcas said just as his phone started vibrating. He pulled it out and answered. As soon as he heard the voice on the other end, he wished he had looked at the scr
een first.

“It's about time. Didn't you get my messages? I never ask anything of you, except this one favor, and you act lik
e a jerk.”

“Isa
belle, I—”

“Don't interrupt me. You're a real piece of work—insulting the hostess of an important dinner party and then running out. These were influential people,
Antoine.”

“Influential people. You're right. I'll go to the store and pick up an apology card. Ho
w's that?”

“Stop being an ass. You made me look bad in front of my
friends.”

“Well then, Isabelle, let's make both of us happy. Keep me miles away from your
friends.”

Isabelle fell silent. Marcas sighed and said, “Listen, let's not fight o
ver this.”

“You've got your son tomorrow night. Try to behave yourself with him. You already screwed up my life. Try not to ruin his.” Isabelle ended
the call.

Marcas put the phone back in his pocket. “Sorry,” he said. “I thought it might be Hodecourt with s
ome news.”

“You've got nothing to apologize for,” Andrivaux said, looking up from the photo. “While you were talking with your wife, I remembered something. We had a closed meeting last month with an outside speaker who gave a remarkable talk. Guess what it was about: L
afayette.”

“Wh
o was it?”

“A historian from the Musée Carnavalet here in Paris. Call and ask for Hervieu. Say I
sent you”

Marcas grabbed his coat. The clue Paul had left flashed in his mind: “The blade follows the flame of pe
rfection.”

“Thank you, brother. I'll let you know as soon as I talk to
the guy.”

“Unfortunately you may not find a guy named Hervieu when
you call.”

“No? I thought you wanted me to get in touch
with him.”

“Yes, of course, I do. But it's not a guy. It
's a gal.”