The Templar's Code

Banging out the final note, Rubin removed his hands from the keyboard and turned toward the divan. “Oh, very well. I bought it from a young chit who clearly had no idea as to the engraving’s true value. She sent me an unsolicited e-mail in which she alluded to having something that I might be interested in purchasing.” He mirthlessly cackled. “She’d invented some outlandish story about finding it behind a wall panel at her place of employment.”

“And why, may I ask, was that an ‘outlandish’ claim?” Caedmon stared intently at the antiquarian.

“Well, because of where she is employed,” Rubin churlishly retorted. “Good God, the chit works at Craven House.”

“Get out of town! That’s right here in London.”

Turning to her, Caedmon raised a questioning brow. “You’re familiar with this Craven House?”

“Oh, I’ve never been there,” Edie was quick to clarify. “But a few years back I read a Franklin biography. Most people don’t know this, but he lived in London for nearly thirty years. As I recall, Craven House was his last residence in Merry Olde.”

Clearly stunned by the revelation, Caedmon’s eyes opened wide. “As in Dr. Benjamin Franklin?”

“None other.”

CHAPTER 54

Craning his neck, Mercurius gazed upon the night sky, dazzled by the glittering array. Like a beacon fire, the stars, the planets, and the celestial bodies beckoned. The Lost Heaven. That luminous place that gave birth to the divine spark — the soul — that resided within each living creature. And where each soul yearned to return.

He pulled his robe tighter across his chest as he strolled to the other side of the slate terrace. Through the limbs of his neighbor’s towering oak, Mercurius easily sighted the Orion constellation. The most conspicuous of all the starry configurations, it was known to the ancient Egyptians as Unas. So named for the pharaoh who rose to military greatness by eating the flesh of his mortal enemies. A ghoulish custom that married the Egyptians’ lurid fascination with death to the art of war. “The business of barbarians” as Napoleon so adroitly referred to it.

But the Egyptians were not the first civilization obsessed with warfare.

Before Egypt came to the forefront of the ancient world, there was the mighty Atlantis. The fabled island of Atlas. The continent rose to prominence twelve thousand years ago. Even then, its culture, medical arts, and highly advanced technology were legendary. It was this highly advanced technology that enabled the Atlanteans to rule the ancient world with an iron fist.

Intolerant. Bloodthirsty. Merciless.

Plato, in Timaeus and Critias, wrote at length about the warmongering Atlanteans. Determined to conquer Athens, an unforeseen calamity befell the mighty Atlanteans prior to the final sea battle, their entire continent destroyed in a cataclysmic explosion. In one fiery instant, Atlantis was no more.

The antiquarian Rubin Woolf had been correct in his assertions; there were survivors from Atlantis who made their way to Egypt. Preeminent among them was Thoth, the High Priest. Thoth bequeathed the Emerald Tablet to the Egyptians and instructed them in the sacred knowledge of the universe. He taught the Egyptians about the sacred Light, that limitless well of energy that could be accessed, tapped into, and used for the greater good. But like the Atlanteans before them, the Egyptians abused and corrupted the sacred knowledge, using it to create a vast militaristic empire. Sad-hearted, the wise Thoth realized the evil still lurked, having slithered forth from the smoldering ashes of Atlantis. Fearful of how the sacred knowledge would be exploited after his death, Thoth concealed the Emerald Tablet.

For thousands of years, the Emerald Tablet remained hidden; until an ambitious upstart named Tuthmose discovered the sacred relic hidden inside a temple column at Hermopolis. A high-ranking member of Pharaoh Akhenaton’s court, Tuthmose was an adherent of monotheism, holding firm to the belief that Aten was the only god in the heavens. It was this ardent belief in the one god that led Tuthmose to slay the temple priests who still believed in the divine pantheon. It was this ardent belief in the one god that led Tuthmose to command the pharaoh’s armies and crush all dissenters. And it was this same ardent belief that inspired Tuthmose to lead the Egyptian royal court and all of its Hebrew slaves out of Egypt.

To secure and consolidate his power, the ambitious Tuthmose, now called Moses, wielded the Emerald Tablet like a weapon. He further strengthened his dominion by creating a new monotheistic religion that heralded Yahweh as the one god. A capricious divinity, Yahweh demanded blind obedience, capable of unimaginable bloodlust if his divine will was thwarted.

Yahweh’s divine will would became the basis for Moses’s innumerable laws, violations of which were punishable by death. To record these draconian strictures, Moses invented the Hebrew alphabet. He then wrote the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament, to reinforce the laws, and he instituted a hereditary priesthood to safeguard the mystical secrets that enabled his totalitarian rule. Gifts from the patriarch.

But Moses was not content to stop there. The ruthless leader next taught the Hebrews how to kill in the name of the one god. To wage “holy” war. And with the sacred relic in his arsenal, no one could stop Moses.

None did. In fact, the first recorded genocides in history were those of the Old Testament, all committed in the name of the one god, the newly minted Yahweh. One brutal account, in particular, speaks to Moses’s infamy. When the Hebrew army returned from their conquest of Midian, it was not enough that the enemy army had been put to the sword and their entire adult male population slaughtered. Moses, infuriated by this act of “leniency,” commanded his soldiers to kill the adult women, butcher every male child and debauch every virgin girl. Regardless of her age. According to the account in Numbers, thousands of children were raped.

Oh, the horror of it!

An atrocity like none other. Glorified for time immemorial in the biblical text.

Is it any wonder that the political theorist Niccolo Machiavelli greatly admired the biblical patriarch?

But Mercurius knew, as did Osman de Leon and Moshe Benaroya, that the man immortalized as the patriarch of the three religions of the Book distorted and corrupted the Light, profaned the sanctity of life, and abused the sacred knowledge to further his own megalomaniacal ambitions. And by so doing, Moses unleashed a dark energy that permeates the world still. In the Luminarium, Osman and Moshe explained how this dark energy was an ancient curse. One that must be reversed.

Chilled, Mercurius walked to the patio door. Despite the cool temperature, a palpable heaviness hung in the air. As though each airborne molecule had been drenched in a thick syrup. He entered the house and walked down the hallway toward his study. As was his custom, he stopped in front of the row of framed photographs and with respectful silence gazed at each horrific image.

Eyes welling with tears, he lightly rested his forehead on the photograph in the middle. Auschwitz. That sadistic death camp where Osman and Moshe drew their last breaths.

Oh, the horror of it.

Knowing it will happen again. And again…

The Crusades. The wars of religion. The world wars.

Not only did Moses glorify war, he claimed that those horrific atrocities were sanctioned by God. But that was a lie. A hoax. A cruel deception that perpetuated the evil by wrapping it in hallowed vestments. The so-called holy wars were simply a bloodthirsty exercise of power. No different from the bloodthirsty exercise of power that forced Thoth, the Atlantean High Priest, to use the sacred relic to create a single catastrophic burst of energy that destroyed the entire continent of Atlantis.

For the greater good.