Shadow Ritual

1

The speaker, a Generation Xer with jet-black hair, stood in front of a stylized sun painting. He scanned the room. It was silent.

This space in Rome’s Alessandro di Cagliostro Freemason Lodge resembled a large dark-blue cavern. Thin rays of light shone down from the ceiling, which was adorned with stars to make it look like the night sky.

To his left and right were forty or so men in black suits, white aprons, and gloves. They were impassive, motionless, like statues made of flesh. There were also a few women in long robes.

He turned to the east, toward the man presiding over the meeting. “I have spoken, Worshipful Master,” he said.

The master waited a few seconds and then pounded a wooden mallet on his small desk. Behind him hung a huge all-seeing Egyptian eye.

“Brothers and sisters, I would like to thank our brother Antoine Marcas for coming from France to speak to us. His lecture on the origins of ancient Masonic rites was quite instructive. He claims to just be a little curious, but it’s clear that he has taken great pains to educate himself in our mysteries. I am sure you have many questions. Sisters and brothers, you may speak.”

A brother clapped, asking to be acknowledged. The senior steward spoke the ritual words and invited him to speak.

“Worshipful Master in person, Worshipful Masters from the Orient, and my brothers and sisters, as we all know, our lodge was named after Alessandro di Cagliostro, and I would like to ask our distinguished brother Marcas to clarify, if possible, the origin of the Cagliostro ritual.”

The speaker looked over the notes he had jotted down on three-by-five cards. “In 1784, in Lyon, France, Cagliostro inaugurated his High Egyptian Masonic Rite in the Triumphant Wisdom Lodge. According to current biographers, Cagliostro was initiated in Malta at the Saint John of Scotland Lodge of Secrecy and Harmony, which is where he founded the ritual that now bears his name.”

Another man clapped.

Antoine Marcas took a closer look at the audience. Both Italian and French lodges were represented. He recognized the Grande Lodge brothers with their red-trimmed Scottish rite aprons and the Memphis Misraïm sisters dressed in white.

The worshipful master gave the floor to a brother with a strong Milanese accent, which made him sound very serious. “Italy’s declining institutions and political corruption continue to make headlines. And the country’s troubles appear to be affecting the rest of Europe, especially France. Some are accusing the Freemasons of being at least partly responsible for this situation. What do you have to say about this?”

Marcas nodded. He didn’t like political questions.

Fifteen years earlier, his idealistic trust in the secular values of the republic had motivated him to become a Freemason. He was also excited by the promise of personal development. Since then, he had watched the image of freemasonry decline in France. Before, the media had praised Freemason contributions to education and conflict resolution. Now they were focused on scandal and mysterious networks of shadowy figures.

Marcas took time to choose his words. He wouldn’t fully disclose his thoughts about anti-Freemason media campaigns or about the brothers who didn’t deserve their aprons. For a while, Marcas had attended a lodge that was full of money launderers and others in cahoots with politicians skilled at rigging public contracts. The lodge was nestled in a suburban Paris townhouse and was rotten to the core. When he’d found out what was going on — a full year before the media went wild over it — he had changed lodges, refusing to condemn all of freemasonry with a handful of corrupt individuals. But doubt had taken seed. And so he dived into the history and symbolism of freemasonry, as if the past could wipe the present clean. Still, every time he read about a scandal involving a Freemason, he took it as a personal affront.

“France has not escaped the evils affecting all Western democracies. There’s a rise in extremism, along with widespread distrust of elitism and power. Whether we deserve it or not, many people who don’t know us consider us both powerful and manipulative. It’s hard to shake that ‘hoodwinker’ slur. Let’s not forget, too, that a good scandal — whether it’s real or not — sells newspapers.”

Marcas answered a few more questions, mixing his expertise with humor.

Then there was silence. The worshipful master took the floor and began the closing ritual, finally calling for the chain of unity.

One by one, the men and women rose, removed their gloves, and crossed their arms, taking their neighbors’ hands to form a human chain around the center of the lodge.

The worshipful master repeated the words of the ritual. “This chain binds us in time and space. It comes to us from the past and stretches toward the future. It connects us to those who came before us.”

Each phase of this ritual and many others had been refined over the centuries, and every participant knew his role perfectly, as though it were a play.

The stewards held mallets across their chests. The master of ceremonies struck the floor with a metal-tipped cane while a mason called a tyler continued to guard the door, a sword in his right hand.

Marcas proclaimed the final pledge. “Liberty, equality, fraternity.”

The meeting was over, and the temple calmly emptied.

In the anteroom, the worshipful master — an aristocratic-looking banker — called out to Marcas in perfect French, “Will you stay and have something to eat?”

Marcas smiled. In every lodge around the world, eating and drinking followed these meetings.

“Alas, no, brother. I’m expected at the French embassy. There’s a Victory in Europe Day shindig. But I plan to come back tomorrow to consult some rare books in your library.”

Marcas said good-bye to his host and walked down the black marble staircase to the ground floor. He left the building, pulled up his coat collar against the wind, and hailed a cab.

“Palazzo Farnese, please.”

As the cab made its way through the Eternal City, Marcas’s thoughts wandered. He gazed at the Piazza Campo de Fiori, where more than five hundred years earlier, the papacy had burned philosopher Giordano Bruno at the stake. Marcas thought Bruno would have made a good “widow’s son,” which some Freemasons called themselves. The widow was the wife of Hiram Abiff, the legendary architect of King Solomon’s Temple, and the son was a reference to Hiram’s descendants, Freemasons around the world.

Things had changed a bit since Giordano was burned at the stake, although the Catholic Church still frowned on freemasonry. The Church held that freemasonry espoused a naturalistic religion — a parallel religion that rivaled the Gospel.

This didn’t bother Marcas. He hadn’t attended church in a long time, although he was still very much a seeker. He had been drawn to the Freemasons’ ethics and body of knowledge, which were based on the idea that one needed to strive continually toward self-improvement and enlightenment. He liked freemasonry’s opportunities for fellowship and education. And the Freemason rituals more than satisfied any yearnings he might have had for the church liturgies that he had left behind.

The sight of the Farnese Palace at the end of the street drew Marcas out of his thoughts. The elegant edifice was glowing, and in the courtyard, expensive cars were performing an intricate ballet as they let out well-dressed partygoers.

Marcas felt for the invitation in the inside pocket of his jacket.

A tingle of enjoyment ran up his spine. He liked the contrasts of his life. Less than a half hour earlier, he had been giving a serious speech in a solemn setting. In a few minutes, he would be mingling with the moneyed set in a luxurious palace that was now the French embassy. And in two days, he would be back at his seedy police station in Paris.

The taxi stopped behind an impressive line of limousines a few hundred feet from the palace. Marcas paid the fare.

He felt a gentle breeze from the south and looked up. The leaves in the nearby trees were quivering. Evenings were cool at this time of year, and Marcas took a moment to enjoy the fleeting springtime air before the brutal summer heat took hold.

Marcas walked up to the doorman, who was wearing a black suit, a white shirt, a black tie, and an earpiece. The guy could have a future as a bodyguard in Hollywood, Marcas thought. The man looked him up and down and let him in without saying a word.

He had barely stepped in when he spotted a hostess in a blue suit walking toward him. With her were two beautiful women who looked to be in their thirties. They offered to show him in.

The night was off to a good start.

2

When it was early May, and the wisteria plants were blossoming, Marek would work late into the night and keep the windows in the lab open to better enjoy the scent of the flowers.

Jerusalem’s Archeological Research Institute was headquartered in a sprawling brick building that the English had built. Its high ceilings were reminiscent of the lost grandeur of an empire. Marek loved its antiquated, nearly abandoned look.

He heard the sprinklers click on outside and gazed once again at two of the mementos on his large worktable: his yellowing dissertation and a hockey stick with flaking paint that he had brought back as a souvenir from the United States, where he had lived for a time.

Marek observed two birthdays every year. The first was the day he was born. The second was the day he was reborn. A walking skeleton, he had been liberated in the spring of 1945 from Dachau. He had made two oaths on that day. The first was to flee the cursed continent of Europe and start over again. He had gone to America. Then, in the nineteen fifties, he had immigrated to Israel, becoming one of the country’s top specialists in Biblical times — a kind of wiseman, he thought: old, mischievous, erudite.

Marek let his mind drift for a moment before he returned to the file on his desk. Two hundred and forty pages, single-spaced. Five test reports from distinguished geology, chemistry, and micro-archeology laboratories, with diagram after diagram and long lists of references.

When the shifty Armenian dealer Alex Perillian had brought the stone in to be authenticated, he knew right away that it was genuine. Artifacts were a big — and clandestine — business, and Marek had seen his fair share of shady characters seeking certificates of authenticity for worthless relics. But this stone was different. The Tebah Stone, Perillian had called it, bought from a family of goatherds for a hundred dollars. But worth infinitely more.

Marek set down the file and opened the linen cloth.

A fragment of a stone tablet lay there. It measured sixty-two by twenty-seven centimeters, and it vibrated with history. The bottom-left corner was chipped, and the end of the inscription was missing, but the remaining words had resisted the assault of time. Was it from pure luck? Or had someone kept it safe? This piece of stone bore a truth passed down through the centuries, a message, written by a hand whose bones had long since returned to dust.

Marek’s palms were sweaty. Original texts were extremely rare, and ever since the discovery of the Dead Sea manuscripts, the state of Israel and the major monotheistic religions had kept a close watch over all finds that could shake their foundations.

His conclusions were concise. “Based on mineralogical analyses, the Cambrian-era stone could have originated in one of three geological regions: southern Israel, the Sinai and Jordan, or south of the Dead Sea. Analysis of the surface alterations reveals the presence of silica, aluminum, calcium, magnesium, and iron, along with traces of wood, which date to 500 BCE, plus or minus forty years with carbon-14. It could very well date to the rebuilding of the Temple of Solomon.”

Marek stopped. King Salomon’s temple was a mythic spot for Jews, said to hold the Arc of the Covenant and the stone tablets on which the Ten Commandments were inscribed. It had been plundered and destroyed by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar. Cyrus the Great of Persia ordered the Second Temple to be built on the same site. Herod the Great embellished it under Roman occupation.

Cyrus’s temple reconstruction in 520 BCE was a key moment in Jewish history, and every artifact related to it was priceless. Marek weighed the stone in his hand. The money meant nothing to Marek. This stone was the missing link, the final element in his quest to honor Henri’s memory, to fulfill his second oath.

All he needed now were the documents from Paris. He stared at the relic and started to tremble. Was it really such a good idea to be waking the dead?

3

A flute of vintage Tattinger Champagne in hand, Antoine Marcas scanned the vast reception hall. He couldn’t help thinking of all the pomp surrounding ambassadors. Yes, France did like to strut. It was hard to get more sumptuous than the Palazzo Farnese. Even the name evoked the splendors of near-absolute magnificence: the Italian Renaissance, an era of princes, freewheeling cardinals, and courtesans skilled at damning the lords of the Church. The wealthy Farnese family had built this residence in the middle of the sixteenth century. They were nobles from Latium who boasted a pope — Paul III — in their lineage. The pontiff’s own son, however, had been excommunicated because of his taste for plundering and rape.

Laughter and voices were bouncing off the walls.

“Antoine, I hope you’re enjoying yourself. It’s quite a change from the police headquarters in Paris, isn’t it?”

Startled, Marcas turned around. It was Alexis Jaigu, a former military man who was now an intelligence officer on some assignment in Rome. Jaigu was the friend who had invited him to this affair.

“Alexis! You must save me. Find me a woman in this crowd of beauties.”

Jaigu made circles with his fingers and brought them to his eyes. “Tall blonde at two o’clock, flaming redhead at six. Two apparently isolated targets without patrol escorts. Intelligence report: the blonde heads up marketing for a San Paolo bank. The redhead is second-in-command at an Israeli company that dabbles in arms sales to emerging countries.”

“Too high-powered for me. You wouldn’t have a more classic model — a painter or dancer, someone a little more artistic?”

“So I take it you’re finally over your ex-wife. It’s about time. How’s your son?”

“He’s living with his mother,” Marcas said, looking away. He didn’t like to talk about his divorce. Cops never stayed married long, and Marcas was no exception to that rule. He had spent many sleepless nights after his wife left him, along with difficult weekends with his son who blamed him for the separation. Some men in his shoes found solace in drink, others in one-night stands. Marcas had buried himself at the Freemason lodge, focused on his symbolism studies. It had taken a full year before he started dating again. But he was still single. One of his occasional dates had told him to let go of his ex before bidding him good night. Marcas had laughed. The only time he thought of his ex-wife was when he wrote the alimony check at the end of the month or when he received one of her hateful letters full of accusations.

Jaigu grabbed a toast with Périgord foie gras from a platter. “Hey, do you know the ambassador?”

“I can’t say I do.”

“So he’s not a Freemason, like you?”

Marcas stiffened. “I’m no snitch. Ask him yourself.”

“You’re joking, right? I don’t want to get sent to some faraway consulate in Africa. It’s a favor I’m asking. Don’t you have some sort of secret code of recognition? A special handshake or something?”

Marcas sighed. It was always the same stupidities: occult influence, signs of recognition — the folklore. How many times had his hand been kneaded by overly familiar non-Masons who had read a few things about freemasonry?

“Sorry, I can’t.”

“At least say you don’t want to, Antoine. How long have we known each other? And you still cover for the ambassador? A man you’ve never even met? You brothers really do stick together.”

Marcas didn’t want to get into a long explanation with his now-tipsy friend. He knew Jaigu well, and tomorrow the man would be full of apologies.

“Drop it, Alexis.”

“I won’t press. And I won’t hold it against you. Let me introduce you to two superb actresses who are waiting for nobody but us,” Jaigu said, throwing his arm around Marcas’s shoulder and leading him to the terrace.

4

Bashir Al Khansa, aka the Emir, rarely went anywhere alone and usually traveled under the cover of night. It was his way of playing Israeli security, which was polluting East Jerusalem. When he had time to sleep, it was in homes carefully chosen by logistics specialists in his movement, which Israeli spies had been trying to infiltrate for a long time.

On this night, Bashir was wearing a thin moustache and a white suit like those favored by rich Lebanese businessmen. A perfect disguise for his meeting with Alex Perillian.

The two men were now sitting in the courtyard, heat reflecting off the old stones. Bashir’s two bodyguards watched over the entrance.

Bashir was seething. “Allah is great, showing us to this stone, and you hand it over to those Jewish pigs? They will sully it with their blasphemous hands.”

Perillian sighed. “Since when have the respectful servants of the Prophet been interested in a stone engraved by the sons of Zion?”

“Everything found in the land of Allah belongs to Allah. Where is the stone now?”

“At the archeological institute. The scientists are analyzing it, and if it is authentic, the price will be high, and your share will be great.”

“The servants of Allah don’t care about money from unbelievers! I want the stone.”

Perillion was sweating now. “Be patient. I’ll get the stone back as soon as the tests are done. Then you can—”

“May Allah curse the infidels who don’t acclaim his light. Nobody must know the significance of the stone — especially those Israeli dogs. Do you understand?”

“But there’s nothing I can do.”

Bashir smiled. “Yes there is.”

Marek was leaning over his worktable, examining his translation of the inscription. On his computer, a software program was matching the concordances with ancient Hebrew texts.

His heart had raced at the idea of being the first to proclaim a fragment linking the chosen people with their destiny. But he had just discovered that he was not the first. In the lower right corner of the stone, an anonymous hand had engraved a Latin cross with branches that widened like the sails of a boat. It was the cross of the Order of the Temple — or the Knights Templar, the order founded by nine Frenchmen in the second decade of the twelfth century on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, just above the Temple of Solomon.

Marek, the venerable master of his Freemason lodge, recognized it immediately. Didn’t some people claim that the higher orders of freemasonry were direct descendants of the Templars? Marek thought those stories were nothing but legend, but he knew them well.

Now the cross danced in front of his eyes. What had the Templars been doing with this stone?

The computer screen lit up. Marek examined the word frequencies one after the other. They supported the dating. Except for a single word — a word that didn’t exist in the database.

First the cross, then the unknown term.

The phone rang, pulling Marek back to the here and now. As he reached for the receiver, he looked at his watch. It was ten thirty.

“Oh, professor.” The caller’s accent was melodious. “What luck. I tried to reach you at home first. Happiness to the man who works late!”

“Perillian, if you’re calling in the middle of the night for my conclusions—”

“Oh no, professor, that’s not it. There’s been a miracle. A real miracle. Someone has just brought me another fragment of the same stone.”

“You must be joking.”

“No, professor. It is from the same source. The family brought it over this very evening.”

“Perillian, you realize that such a discovery could have a significant bearing on my current analysis.”

“I’m all too aware of that, professor. I don’t want to keep such a treasure from you.”

“When will you bring it over?”

“Right away. I’ll send over a servant. I can’t just leave the family who brought it like that, etiquette and all. You can trust the man I’m sending. His name is Bashir. Can you make sure he doesn’t get caught up at the roadblocks?”

“Don’t worry about that. Fax me his papers, and I’ll inform the ministry right away.”

“Thank you, professor. You’ll see. It’s one of a kind, really.”

Marek ended the call and turned to the computer screen.

Perillian smiled at Bashir. “You see—”

He didn’t have time to finish his sentence. Bashir, a gun with a silencer in hand, stood over the businessman as he crumpled to the floor. He had aimed for the spleen, granting the man a merciful death — painful, yes, but quick. He had surprised himself with this act of kindness. He usually preferred to watch the life drain from his victims slowly, not so much out of sadism as from curiosity. The life force was there, and then it wasn’t. Every time, death was unique, but in many ways it was the same, whether the man was a Jew, a Muslim, or a Christian.

Bashir slipped out of the Armenian’s room. His two bodyguards followed without a word, and they got into a car with fake plates. He gave the address of the institute and exchanged his suit for a djellaba. A Jew awaited him tonight. Bashir would see a life extinguish again. And the man would not get the favor he had extended to Perillian. This time he would adhere to a precise ritual.

5

Sophie Dawes scurried across the large room, stumbling more than once because only the outside lights illuminated the space. She gasped each time she hit something. Fear constricted her blood vessels.

The library entrance was just over there. Maybe, just maybe she could escape. She turned the handle, using all her strength. In vain. The elaborately carved wooden door remained shut. Exhausted from her sprint, Sophie collapsed on the floor.

She heard soft footsteps coming toward her. The person was moving along the fresco-covered wall. Sophie could hear the din of the party in the ground-floor reception room. She took a deep breath and crept toward a window.

“It’s no use.” The voice was firm, definitive.

Paralyzed by fear, Sophie looked up slowly. In front of her stood a young blonde woman wearing a strange smile. She was holding a telescopic baton with a metal tip.

The voice rang out again. “Where are the documents?”

“What documents? I don’t know what you’re talking about. Please, let me go,” Sophie pleaded.

“Don’t act stupid,” the woman said, using her baton to slowly lift Sophie’s skirt. “What you found is none of your business. You are just an archivist. I only need to know where the papers are.”

A wave of panic ran through Sophie. She felt stripped naked.

“You were hired as an archivist a year ago, right after your thesis at the Sorbonne. That was quite a presentation you made. The jury really liked it, although you looked a little stiff in your brand-new suit. Let’s see, what else can I tell you? Oh yes, you were supposed to go to Jerusalem tomorrow.”

“That can’t be,” Sophie moaned. You can’t…”

“But it is. Are you sure you don’t want to tell me anything? I can go on. Your thesis director found you that job. He has many friends, or should I say brothers?”

Sophie tried to get up, but the baton came down on her. She cried out in pain and clutched her shoulder.

“Quiet, or I’ll break your other shoulder blade.”

“Please.”

“Where are they?”

“I don’t know,” Sophie cried out. “I don’t know anything.”

The woman’s voice became more sinister. “You shouldn’t lie,” she whispered. “Perhaps I have not made myself entirely clear.”

She swung the black ebony instrument in the air and brought it down on Sophie’s neck. Sophie lost all the feeling in her legs.

The voice was singsong now. “You cannot move anymore, but you can still talk. This is your last chance.”

Sophie Dawes knew that the final blow would be fatal if she kept silent. She would die right here. Although she was just above a room filled with more than a hundred guests, no one would take notice, and no one would help.

“At the Hilton. My room, number 326. Please don’t hurt me,” she said, staring into her torturer’s almond-shaped eyes. They were keen and distant. Sophie had fallen for this woman at the party. She had introduced herself as Helen and told Sophie that she was studying for an advanced degree in art history. They had talked with passion about Renaissance painters. Sophie thought she was graceful and exciting. She couldn’t resist when the beautiful blonde suggested that they go someplace quiet, far from the crowd, to explore the frescos.

The two women had slipped upstairs as the uninterested security guards looked on. The nightmare had begun as soon as Helen closed the door behind them. The blonde had pulled her close as if to kiss her. Then Sophie saw the small black instrument, felt the electric shock, and fell to the floor. The woman then lifted her onto a sofa.

Sophie had come to quickly. She kicked her attacker in the ribs and ran toward the library.

Now Sophie had lost. She prayed that her attacker would just leave. It wasn’t fair. She was only twenty-eight. Helen smiled. Her expression looked affectionate, and Sophie felt relief.

“Thank you. Your death will be quicker.”

The angel of death kissed Sophie gently on the forehead and swung the baton.

Sophie heard it coming and lifted a hand to shield her face. Her fingers broke under the blow. She collapsed, her eyebrow split open. Her blood flowing onto the polished floor.

Below her, a quartet was playing selections from an opera. The sounds of the party rose through the floorboards and slipped along the ancient walls, filling the private chambers and gilded sitting rooms.

Sophie recognized the Donizetti aria, “Una furtive lagrima,” just as she understood the full significance of the three blows: one to the shoulder, one to the neck, and one to the forehead.

6

The first pages of Descartes’s Discourse on Method had always fascinated Marek: a philosopher holed up in his room with his stove, who, by the sole power of reasoning, had found a solution to every problem. For Marek, this was a key life lesson, a personal approach. Now, in his deserted lab, Marek talked to himself. He bounced ideas off the walls, waiting for order to rise from chaos.

He typed out his thoughts regarding the stone as they took form. “Based on similar ritual formulas found in texts from the same period, this would appear to be written by a temple intendant. It contains a list of materials, including two types of wood — cedar and juniper.”

Marek reached for a Bible. The construction of Solomon’s Temple was described in the first Book of Kings. It was all there: the dimensions, the interior architecture, and the materials. The interior walls were lined with cedar and juniper. The inner sanctuary for the Ark of the Covenant was lined with cedar and gold. And in this sanctuary, Solomon placed a pair of cherubs made of olive wood.

“Undoubtedly, the intendant was addressing the leader of an outgoing caravan.”

Marek put the Bible down. Many of the ancient writings focused on administration: accounting, bills, laws, decrees, orders, counterorders. Clearly, humans had always fallen prey to two major demons: organization and hierarchy. The Tebah Stone would have been no exception, were it not for that one sentence.

Three lines before the traditional closing lines, the intendant added a final instruction: “Watch over your men. Make sure that they do not buy or bring back that demon bvitti that seeds the mind with prophesies.”

He hadn’t been able to find the word in any of his reference works on Semitic language and scripture. It was as if the word had not survived the torrents of time and the tribulations of the Jewish people. Now Marek was seeing it long after some obscure functionary had struck it with an official curse.

The phone rang.

“Professor, you have a visitor. The man says you’re waiting for a package. I’ve searched him.”

“It’s fine, Isaac. Let him up. I’m expecting him.”

“As you wish.”

The professor hung up and headed into the hallway to wait for the messenger. The elevator doors opened with a whish. A man in a djellaba stepped out. He had a thin face and piercing eyes, and he was carrying a beige canvas bag. He smiled at Marek.

“Professor, I give you respects from my master.”

“Thank you. I’ll take the package. Then you can go home. It’s late.”

The man’s smile broadened.

“Thank you, professor. Would you be kind enough to offer me some water? I am thirsty.”

Marek wanted to yank the bag from the man’s hand, but he took a deep breath instead. “Of course. Follow me. There’s a water fountain near my office.”

The two men walked down the hallway, past classrooms and research labs, until they reached Marek’s office.

“Help yourself,” Marek said, motioning to the fountain in the hallway.

He didn’t wait a second longer to take the bag. Marek stepped into his office and opened it. He removed a dark stone, set it on his desk, and examined its shape, hoping it would contain some clues about that unknown word. After a few seconds, he shook his head. He took off his glasses, and rubbed his eyes.

“Is this some kind of joke?” he asked the man, who had come into his office. “This is a fake, and a bad one at that. It wouldn’t even fool tourists. Has Perillian lost his mind? I’m warning you—”

Before Marek could finish his sentence a sharp blow broke his shoulder blade. He fell to the floor, gasping in pain.

“You don’t have to warn me, Jew,” the messenger said in a silken voice. “The problem with all you sons of Israel is that you still think you’re the masters of my land. Now I’m the one warning you. Your death is imminent. I was asked to kill you with a stick.”

The man struck Marek again, this time on the neck. He was barely conscious now, but he remembered every detail of Henri’s execution sixty years earlier in Dachau.

He knew the third blow would kill him.

Marek stared his killer in the eye and managed to say the one sentence from the Masonic ritual. “The flesh falls from the bones.”

Bashir brought the stick down on Marek’s head. “Another damned Jewish ritual,” he muttered.

Blood flowed down the researcher’s face.

Bashir put the walking stick in the stand where he had found it and looked around the man’s office.

There it was, on the cluttered desk — the Tebah Stone. He slipped it into his bag, along with the papers next to it. He looked at the computer screen, printed the page with the professor’s comments, and erased the file. He removed his djellaba, stuffed it into the bag, and stepped over Marek’s body, carefully avoiding the blood pooled around the man’s head.

In the elevator, he wondered why his client had required that ritual. It was too complicated, as far as he was concerned. Strangling was quicker and cleaner. When he was younger, Bashir had been partial to throat slitting. Then one September night in Beirut, when he was executing a contract at a private party, a spurt of blood had stained his Armani suit — a superb three piece he had bought in Rome. A suit that had put him back a thousand euros — ruined. He had used guns and rope ever since.

Bashir headed to the front entrance, where the guard, hypnotized by a parade of blondes, was watching television. The man died instantly.

Bashir checked his watch. He had just enough time to get to a hiding place. He removed the video recording from the security camera. This job was almost too easy. He wasn’t even getting his usual adrenaline rush.

He paused a few seconds and hit the yellow alarm button. A siren ripped through the silence. Police cars would arrive in a matter of minutes, their lights flashing.

He felt his blood flowing to his brain and heart. Now he was getting that rush. He ran toward his car, where his two bodyguards waited.

The plan had worked perfectly. The safe house was five minutes away. Bashir felt for the stone in the bag as he watched the street fly by. Another fine night in Jerusalem.

7

This time, his charm was working. The French movie producer laughed every time Marcas made a joke. Perhaps he’d suggest that they go downtown for a drink and more conversation. Just as Marcas was about to do that, he felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned to find Alexis Jaigu leaning toward his ear. “Come quick. I need you. Now.”

Marcas shook his head. No, not now. He wasn’t going to miss out on his chance for a little Roman love.

Before he could protest, his friend pulled him aside and whispered, “It’s urgent, Antoine.”

“What’s going on?”

“Come and see for yourself.”

Marcas turned to the producer and excused himself. “I won’t be long,” he said with a smile.

The party was in full swing. A DJ had replaced the quartet, and guests were dancing to the latest hits.

Marcas followed Jaigu, who took the stairs two at a time, nearly in rhythm with the Benny Benassi selection coming out of the speakers. Marcas’s ten-year-old son had introduced him to the group.

Two men were guarding a large wooden door. They stepped aside for the intelligence officer. Inside, Marcas saw two other gorillas bending over a mass. He walked closer, finally making out the body of a woman in a pool of blood.

Jaigu squatted next to the body.

“This can’t get out to the media,” Jaigu said. “It would be a disaster for the embassy’s image. Our relations with the Italian administration are already tense. The press would have a heyday.”

Marcas glowered. “Alexis, what am I doing here? You know I have no authority. This is a job for the head of security.”

Jaigu didn’t take his eyes off the lifeless body. “I know, but you’re a homicide detective. And the victim is a personal friend of the head of security. We have to be spot-on with this. Please. As a favor to me. Just take a look. Our chief security officer will be here shortly.”

Marcas sighed. “We need to lift fingerprints, examine the body, and—”

Jaigu interrupted him. “I just want your first impressions. Security has orders to cordon off the embassy. We have a witness.”

Marcas leaned over the body. The metallic odor of the woman’s blood and the sweet smell of beeswax floor polish mingled with her scent. Probably Shalimar, Marcas thought. “What do you know so far?”

“The victim went upstairs with another woman around forty-five minutes ago. One of the guards saw them. Ten minutes later, the other woman came down and disappeared. The guard figured he should check on this one. He alerted us as soon as he discovered the body.”

“I still don’t get what you want from me. I can’t do anything here, and your security chief will be furious. I would be. Why isn’t he here, anyway?”

Jaigu gave a sheepish smile. “Okay, okay. You caught me. I’ve been at war with her.”

“Her?”

“Special Agent Jade Zewinski. Fearsome — ask anyone who knows her. Some people don’t even bother calling her by her last name. They just call her Jade because she’s hard as stone. Joined the army young, rose quickly, intelligence, commandos, tours in the Middle East and Afghanistan. Lots of rage and lots of connections. Luckily, the guard who found this woman is a friend of mine, and he contacted me first. I just want your thoughts so I can tell the ambassador before she gets to him.”

“You’re out for a promotion on this?”

“Listen, anything you find could help us solve this case. First impressions are important in a murder investigation, right? And on top of that, if I could stick it to that pain in the ass Jade, well, why not? It’s the first murder in this palace since the Farneses lived here, and the victim happens to be a friend of hers. That should put a dent in her career. If it doesn’t get her transferred to a French embassy in Latvia or Angola, I’ll apply for Freemason initiation just to learn your handshake.”

Marcas didn’t want to get involved in a power struggle that had nothing to do with him. Still, the murder was intriguing, and he started to go over the body, paying special attention to the forehead and shoulder. What a strange way to die. It reminded him of something, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

8

Special Agent Jade Zewinski pushed her way through the guests. The call to her cell phone had interrupted a tête-à-tête with a handsome Italian actor. He was insufferable and pretentious but attractive enough for a romp in the sack. Jade had left the buck standing there with his Champagne. She didn’t even excuse herself.

Her second-in-command didn’t waste any time when she got to him. “It’s your friend,” he spit out. “She’s dead. They found her upstairs. I’m so sorry.”

The blood drained from her face. She felt a lump in her throat. She and Sophie had known each other since high school in Paris. Back then, they were like sisters. They hadn’t seen each other in more than a year, though — until two days ago, when Sophie had shown up in Rome. She’d changed. She was more mature and had lost nearly all of her youthful spontaneity.

Jade’s second-in-command cleared his throat. “Ma’am, Jaigu is already up there.”

Jade stiffened. “What the hell?”

“He got the news before we did. I don’t know how.”

“That shit’s got no business being at our crime scene. He’s just an intelligence officer. Have the men toss him out.”

“That’s hard to do, Chief. He’s got the ambassador’s ear.”

Jade picked up her pace, bumping into an Italian minister and nearly knocking over the German ambassador. She was thinking about Sophie. At breakfast in a small café on the Piazza Navone, Sophie had filled in the gaps. She had finished her degree in comparative history and taken over her parents’ Paris bookstore on the Rue de Seine. It specialized in old esoteric manuscripts. Demand was exploding for alchemy treatises, Masonic documents, and occult breviaries from the eighteenth century. She had customers from all over the world.

On the side, she had become a Freemason, mostly out of curiosity. Her thesis director had sponsored her. The path fascinated her, and she volunteered as an archivist at the Grand Orient Freemason headquarters in Paris. With her knowledge of ancient manuscripts, she had quickly organized and documented the tons of archives hidden away there.

Jade had made a face when Sophie mentioned the Freemasons. There was no love lost with these people. She’d rubbed shoulders with brothers twice in her life and had bitter memories of both occasions. The last time, she’d missed out on a position in Washington because an initiate had skillfully worked his connections. She hated this kind of old-boys network, although Masons were not the only ones with power in French diplomatic circles. In fact, they weren’t as powerful as Catholics and aristocrats, but still…

Sophie had stopped in Rome while en route to Jerusalem. She had seemed tense, saying she was on an assignment for the Grand Orient. She was supposed to be giving some documents to an Israeli researcher. She kept glancing around during their breakfast together, as if she suspected someone was watching her. She had asked Jade to keep a briefcase with the documents in the embassy safe. Jade joked about her paranoia, but agreed to keep them anyway. Then they talked about their relationships, an endless topic. Sophie mentioned an older man — a rich American customer who came through Paris occasionally — and some special women friends.

Sophie had laughed and flirted with her friend. But Jade had always made it clear that she only had eyes for men.

Now Sophie would never laugh again.

On the way up the stairs, Jade decided to keep quiet about Sophie’s documents. She had a hunch that they had something to do with her friend’s death. She pushed the thought out of her head when she spotted the two men bent over the body.

“You’ve got no fucking business being here,” she yelled. “Get away. Now, damn it!”

Marcas started. Her voice carried authority, and she was obviously used to giving orders. He looked up and saw an athletically built woman with short blonde hair. She was wearing loose dark-colored pants and a suit jacket — fitted to give her access to her service weapon.

When he stood up, she was right in his face, staring at him with a clear look of disdain.

“Hold up,” Jaigu intervened. “I asked him to come. He’s a homicide detective with the Criminal Investigation Division in Paris. I thought he could help us.”

Jade shot Jaigu a look. “Since when does a man like you think? If you really wanted to use your brains, you would have kept him away from the crime scene. Until further notice, I’m head of security for the embassy. So at the risk of repeating myself, I’ll try to appeal to your inherent intelligence: get the fuck out of here, and take this dude with you!”

Before Jaigu could respond, Marcas spoke up. “You owe him more respect than you’ve shown. But I understand your point of view. I’ll leave you to your investigation. Everyone has a job to do. Alexis, come on. I’ve seen enough.”

What a harpy, Marcas thought as he walked away with Jaigu. She would have ripped him a new one if she’d gotten the chance. Whatever. With any luck, he’d find his movie producer and cap the evening with a little seduction.

Jaigu interrupted his fantasy. “So what are your impressions?”

“About what, that shrew of yours?”

“No, the body.”

“I don’t know. There’s no clear logic in the blows she received. She probably died from blunt-force trauma to the forehead, but I don’t understand why she was hit on the shoulder, unless it was to make her suffer. A broken clavicle can be quite painful. For the rest, you’ll have to trust your Amazon and the Italian police.”

“I doubt that. There’s no way any Romans cops will set foot in the embassy. Officially, the woman’s death will be listed as accidental.”

Marcas looked at his friend for a long time. “You’re not really going to cover up a murder, are you? That’s illegal.”

“Don’t worry. We won’t keep anything from the French authorities. But the Italians have way too many mob-related murders to worry about. A French woman suffering a fatal head injury from a fall will go by the boards. So put all this behind you and have some Champagne on the republic’s dime. I have to go see our friend the ambassador.”

9

Jade Zewinski stared at her friend’s bloody body. Two hours earlier, they had been joking at the reception, challenging each other to come on to this person or that. Jade remembered Sophie’s oval face, the rebellious lock of hair, her childlike smile. Now Sophie’s lifeless body lay in front of her, a mass of dead flesh that would end up in a coffin, her face smashed by the baton on the floor next to her.

Jade shook herself out of her trance. She needed to act quickly. A guard had seen the woman who had come up with Sophie, and a description had been sent to all the security agents.

She shouted out her orders. “Get the on-call doctor here. Have him fix her up a little. Make sure there’s respiratory assistance for the transfer. The oxygen mask will cover up the wounds.”

The doors slammed shut. Only two men remained. They were gendarmes, men who were quick and could be trusted.

Her phone vibrated in her pocket. She recognized the ambassador’s voice.

“Special Agent Zewinski, what’s going on?” the ambassador asked. “How serious is it?”

They used a code for the level of emergency. It was based on the Richter scale. Nine meant the ambassador’s life was in danger.

For Jade, Sophie’s death was an eight. But she gave the ambassador a detached, professional assessment. “I’d say a five.” The event was worrisome, but controllable.

“Okay, give me a quick rundown. Then I’ve got to take care of our guests.”

“Yes, sir.”

She gave the ambassador a synopsis. He wanted to know if the death could have any political implications. Jade reassured him that the victim was not on the embassy’s staff. Neither was she one of the evening’s VIPs. The ambassador was polite enough not to sigh in relief.

Jade knew the protocol. The body would be flown to Paris the next day with a falsified certificate indicating an accidental death. This would allow them to get the body through customs.

She would make the arrangements herself first thing in the morning. She would order the coffin, and with any luck, the body would reach Paris by evening.

Jade had no illusions that the killer was still on the premises. Jade was sure. She’d have to pull the security footage.

Jade bent down and touched Sophie’s hand one last time before turning to leave. She would find the son of a bitch who murdered her friend.

She pulled the heavy door open and almost slammed into Jaigu’s detective buddy, who was out of breath.

“I need to check something on the body,” he said.

“That’s out of the question. Get out of here before I have you removed.”

“Don’t be idiotic. Listen, even if you won’t let me see her, go in and check the body. Look at her neck. Please. It’s important.”

Jade glared at the cop and then shrugged. “Okay, but if you’re wasting my time, you’ll regret it.”

She went back to the body and then returned to the detective. Now she was even more troubled. “There was a blow to her neck. It probably broke her cervical bones. How did you know?”

The detective reached for her arm. “We should talk about this somewhere else,” he said.

Jade pulled away. “That’s enough. Talk! Right now, right here!”

“Sophie was your friend, wasn’t she?” he said after a few seconds. “Did she have some connection to the Freemasons? Was she a Mason?”

“What does that have to do with her murder?”

“Answer me, please. It’s not a trick question.”

Jade pursed her lips. “Yes, she was a Freemason. Now explain yourself.”

The detective scanned the paintings of Florentine masters. “The flesh falls from the bones,” he said.

10

Helen struggled to contain her rage. She had searched the hotel room twice and had found no trace of the documents. Her boss would by very displeased with this turn of events. That bitch had played her.

She sat on the soft bed and tried to regain her composure. She had been trained to think calmly. She took deep breaths and chanted, something she had seen a Serbian priest do during the Bosnian War. She would never forget the serene look on his face amid all the chaos. He even wore that look in death, after he had been shot in the gut. Helen didn’t know anything about liturgical chanting — she had no interest in religion — so she made up her own phrases and pulled them out in moments like this one.

She had to think.

Dawes had seen only one person in Rome, her school friend who worked at the embassy. Nobody else could have the documents. They had to be in the embassy, but she couldn’t go back there. She had failed in her mission.

Helen left the room, slipping her passkey into her pocket. Ever since hotels had abandoned keys for magnetic-strip keycards, it was a child’s play to break into rooms. She had bought a little electronic encoding machine at a Chinese shop for a mere ten thousand euros. Now she could go wherever she wanted in any hotel in the world that hadn’t started using radio-frequency identification or another more secure system.

She took the elevator down and slipped out unnoticed. She would wait until morning to report in.

11

Jade had Marcas repeat himself.

“The flesh falls from the bones,” he said. “It’s a sentence from a Freemason ritual referring to the murder of Hiram, the founder of the order.”

“What does that have to do with this murder? Bring it down a notch so a simple layperson like me can understand. I gather you are a member of that group.”

Marcas rubbed his cheek. He could already feel the stubble.

“Three blows: to the shoulder, to the neck, and to the forehead, as in the legend of Hiram. You see, according to Masonic tradition, the architect who built King Solomon’s temple held powerful secrets. Three workers grew jealous of him. They conspired against him, and one night they set a trap.”

Marcas could see the tension in Jade’s arms.

“This is ridiculous!” she spit out. “Sophie just got murdered, and you’re reciting the Bible. I must be hallucinating.”

“Let me finish. The first worker struck him on the shoulder. Hiram refused to talk and fled. The second worker hit the architect on the neck. He managed to escape again. But the third worker finished him off with a blow to the forehead.”

Now she was listening.

“This story is very important to us. It is highly symbolic. But there’s something else.”

“What?”

“These murders generally accompany a period of anti-Masonic persecution.”

“There you have it — a conspiracy! You’re out of your mind.”

“And you’re close-minded! For more than a century now, there have been murders such as this one. It’s always the same: a blow to the shoulder, a blow to the neck, and a blow to the forehead. It’s almost like marking the victims as martyrs.”

“How do you know about these murders?”

“I’ve heard about them at various lodges.”

“And?”

“This is undoubtedly a message.”

“So do you have any idea who it’s from? You’ve got so many enemies.”

“Most people who don’t like us aren’t enemies. They’re just ignorant.”

Jade shook her head.

“Go back to your stories and legends. I have a murder to solve, the murder of someone very dear to me. If she hadn’t joined your sect, she’d be alive.”

“Don’t insult me,” Marcas said. “I don’t belong to a sect, and I don’t think your friend would have shared your point of view. Since you’re not interested in what I have to say, I’ll leave. I have my own cases to tend to.”

His voice bounced off the palace walls, which had echoed so many other arguments and conspiracies since the time of the Farnese family.

This time, Jade grabbed his arm, and it was Marcas who was glaring. He didn’t like this woman and wanted her to know it. “Special Agent Zewinski, your ignorance matches your incompetence. Remove your hand. It’s in your best interest.”

She shot him a challenging smile. “What are you going to do?” she said. “Call your boyfriends to come over and put a spell on me?”

Marcas’s anger rose two notches, but he didn’t show it. “Oh no, just the media. Your bosses at the foreign office will love it. It’s not every day that a French national gets bumped off at the Farnese Palace.”

“You won’t have time to do that.”

“You forget my boyfriends. Some of them are reporters and editors,” he said, taking out his cell phone. “Would you like me to make a call? I’m all for transparency.”

Jade balled her hands into fists. “That’s blackmail. Transparency my ass. How ironic from a Mason. You and your buddies love conspiring in the lodge.”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“You’ve got to understand how we outsiders — the common mortals — see it. Meetings that ordinary people can’t attend, aprons, hand tools that never get dirty, and all that playacting. And oh, if you need a job, just call your Mason buddy. He’ll take care of everything. But silly me, I’m just making all of that up, aren’t I.”

“I won’t do you the honor of making a response.”

“A thousand apologies. After all, I’m just a layperson — what do you call us? Profanes? — deprived of the light of the Great Architect of the Universe?”

“We have nothing to hide.”

“You could have fooled me. But then, everyone has secrets.”

Marcas narrowed his eyes. “So what are yours?” he asked.

“My secrets? Let’s just say I’m an exception. I don’t have secrets. I don’t lead a double life as a cop and a hoodwinked brother. But I do have to admit that it would have given me a leg up in my career.”

“And just maybe it would have knocked that chip off your shoulder. In the meantime, though, you’ll just be pulling off some secret agent body-vanishing cover-up of your friend’s murder.”

Marcas and Jade stared at each other a good ten seconds, and then the cop turned on his heels and walked away.

12

“So what is this stone?” Bashir said to himself when he got to his hideout, a small apartment not far from the archeology institute. Unwrapping the item, he wondered if it was worth more than what he was charging his client. The frenzy for artifacts from Palestine hadn’t slackened since the 1946 find in Qumran — the Dead Sea Scrolls, an ideological bombshell. For conservative Jews the scrolls proved that Christians were nothing more than the descendants of a very minor Jewish sect, the Essenes, who predicted the Apocalypse and ran off to the desert. Jesus was just a bottom-tier prophet. Later, of course, other studies brought into question the Essenien origin of the scrolls, and the famous purification pools that attracted tourists were now thought to be ordinary sedimentation pits.

In any case, ideology didn’t interest Bashir. Money did. Some decadent Westerners were willing to pay a small fortune to get this find to Paris. He pulled out the documents he’d retrieved along with the stone and looked them over. Then he opened a map on his laptop and studied the coastal road that ran along the Sinai Desert from Eilat — a real furnace this time of year. And he’d encounter a number of Egyptian Army roadblocks. Too risky. Egypt was a bad idea.

He clicked again and tried flights from Jordan. He could cross the border when it opened in the morning, although it would be no picnic. Searches were systematic. But he had an idea. He could get to Amman by midmorning.

He reserved the flight from Amman to Paris, via Amsterdam.

13

Marcas rolled the toothpick from the salmon hors d’oeuvre between his fingers. What a ridiculous confrontation he’d just had with the head of security. He was annoyed with himself for backing off, but what good would it have done to argue? She had attacked him for being a Freemason, and nothing would have changed her mind. She would never understand his real commitment and the beauty of the rituals. She saw only the dark side.

He looked around, searching for the movie producer, but she was nowhere to be seen. Half the guests had left, and Jaigu had also disappeared. He was probably writing his report for the ambassador and busy undermining his colleague.

Marcas had turned toward the cloakroom when he heard Pink Martini’s “U Plavu Zoru,” a heady mix of violins, congas, and chanting. He recognized the warm, sensual voice of China Forbes, the group’s vocalist. Marcas closed his eyes to savor the moment.

His reverie didn’t last long. He opened his eyes to the sight of Zewinski standing in front of him, hands on her hips. She was blocking his way.

“We’re needed.”

“We?”

Zewinski held out a crumpled paper. “Yes, we. You and me. The cursed couple. The spook and the hoodwinker, if you prefer. Here. You do know how to read, don’t you?”

Marcas began scanning the fax, bristling at her repeated use of the word “hoodwinker.” The term was a reference to the blindfold a Freemason wore during his initiation, when he acquired knowledge and moved from darkness to light. Marcas put the insult out of his mind and read the missive. “The above-mentioned police officer will make himself immediately available to the consular authorities. He will fully cooperate with the head of security.”

Great. Marcas thrust the paper back at her. “I presume you aren’t responsible for this.”

“You are clever, aren’t you? If it were up to me, I would have my men toss you out of the embassy. It seems that your friend Jaigu told the brass that you were here.”

“Listen, let’s not play games,” Marcas responded. “Neither you nor I want to spend any more time together than necessary. I’ll send you a report tomorrow certifying that I didn’t see anything upstairs. You’ll keep your investigation, and I’ll be left alone. I’ll go back to Paris and that will be that.”

“Deal,” she said, smiling for the first time. “And of course, not a word to your friends at the lodge.”

“That goes without saying. Besides, if I described you to them, they wouldn’t believe me. So much kindness and grace in a single person is the stuff of dreams.”

“It will be a pleasure not to see you again, Inspector.”

“Same to you.”

She shot him a biting look and headed toward a group of guards near the kitchen doors.

Marcas started to leave but changed his mind. Instead, he moved closer to the group. Jade’s voice was raised. She looked furious. One of the men pointed at Marcas. She rolled her eyes.

“What now?” she said.

“Here’s my card. I’m staying at the Zuliani in case you need me,” he said, flashing her a smile.

She looked him up and down. “You’re too kind, but I don’t think I’ll need you or your card. Just drop your letter off at the embassy.”

He surveyed the kitchen. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing. The butler is coming to. He was knocked out, apparently by one of the waitstaff hired for the evening. With any luck, he’ll be able to describe her. Good night,” she said, turning her back on him.

Marcas shrugged and took off for the cloakroom. The spook and the hoodwinker — he liked it. It was just possible that she had a sense of humor.

The vision of the young woman’s body came back to him. Who was twisting the Hiram ritual, a key Freemason observance? Who would push provocation so far as to execute another person in that way? The reenactment of Hiram’s death in Freemason rites was a parable full of philosophical meaning. So what was the message the killer or killers were trying to send?

The murderer had to have inside knowledge. The witness mentioned a woman — a Mason-killing woman. It was grotesque and worrisome. His head spinning, Marcas left the embassy and hailed a cab at the end of the street.

He was fatigued and confused. But in the backseat of the cab, his brain rebooted. He analyzed, compared, and reconstructed the scene. Inside the embassy, a young woman’s life had come to a tragic end. Whether he liked it or not, she was a Freemason sister, and her homicide was now his problem.

The taxi stopped at his hotel, which was in one of the few quiet neighborhoods in the Eternal City. It had long, narrow streets that cars avoided, sidewalks lined with lemon trees, and vast villas built during the fascist era.

Once in his room, he pulled out a leather-bound notebook and leafed through it to an empty page. He carefully opened the red-lacquer pen his son had given him for Father’s Day and set to work.

He jotted down the ritual used by the killer and reviewed his recollections of similar slayings he had heard about in his research of Freemason history. The scholar who had related these stories — the worshipful master at the Trois Lumières Lodge and a specialist in Spanish history — had died ten years earlier. He had recounted two series of attacks against Freemasons one hundred years apart. Marcas had no idea how much truth there was to the stories or if they were just amplifications of the various persecutions brothers had been subjected to over the centuries.

The first had occurred right after Napoleon’s troops had left Spain. A hundred Spanish brothers were decapitated for their support of the Frenchman’s ideas and their hostility to the monarchy. The second was during the Spanish Civil War, which pitted supporters of the republic against rebels led by General Francisco Franco, a sworn enemy of freemasonry.

Marcas would have to find his notes. He remembered something about executions in Seville, a pillaged lodge, and Freemasons discovered with their skulls cracked open. “Hiram” was written in blood on their foreheads.