The Templar's Code

CHAPTER 51

Garbed in dressing gowns and bedroom slippers, Caedmon and Edie trudged down the steps to Rubin’s private residence on the second floor. Caedmon had the Mylar-encased frontispiece and the decoded encryption clutched in his right hand.

As they approached Rubin’s flat, the door flung wide open.

“Comrades! The battle is joined. Time to gin up the troops.” Rubin, wearing a black velvet smoking jacket, complete with monogrammed breast pocket and silk ascot, handed each of them a full martini glass. If one ignored the spiky punk coif, he looked like the lead character in a Noel Coward play. At seeing Caedmon’s askance expression, Rubin sheepishly smiled. “I couldn’t locate the teakettle.”

“It’s usually found on top of the Aga.” Caedmon ushered Edie through the doorway. Stepping inside the ultramodern flat, he pointedly directed his gaze toward the kitchen, a sleek chrome kettle in plain sight.

Rubin walked over to the built-in bar and retrieved a third cocktail glass. Raising his glass in their direction, he cheerfully said, “I’m absolutely over the moon that you deciphered the frontispiece. Well done, Sir Peter. And kudos to the lovely Edie as well. Mazel tov.”

Edie’s eyes opened wide. “Boy, he is in good spirits,” she murmured under her breath.

“Dear Peter, I’m about to collapse with anticipation. Do tell! What is the encrypted message that Sir Francis left for posterity?”

Barely able to contain a triumphant smirk, Caedmon handed Rubin the sheet of paper with the decoded encryption.

Moses Egypticus mined Thoth’s stone.

The other man’s eyes narrowed. “You’re certain?”

Caedmon wordlessly nodded.

“Unbelievable. Francis Bacon actually had the sacred Emerald Tablet in his possession.” Rubin’s left hand noticeably shook, gin and vermouth sloshing over the side of his martini glass. “I am utterly staggered.”

Yes, it is staggering, Caedmon thought, still marveling at the revelation. Sought after by pharaohs. Confiscated by Moses. Uncovered by the Knights Templar. And rediscovered by Walter Ralegh. The damned thing had been secretly bandied about for centuries.

The Emerald Tablet.

Nearly fourteen years after the disgrace at Oxford, he’d discovered a missing link actually existed that connected the Knights Templar to ancient Egypt. A missing link that would validate his derided dissertation.

He had only to find the relic.

Visibly agog, their host motioned them toward a low-slung white divan. Mounted on the wall directly behind the settee was a triptych by the twentieth-century abstract painter Francis Bacon. A ghoulishly ironic homage to the famed artist’s namesake. In the near corner a white baby grand piano took center stage.

Bustling over to the kitchen, Rubin retrieved a cerulean blue serving plate piled high with coconut macaroons. “A celebration is in order.” All smiles, he gallantly extended the plate in Edie’s direction.

“Gosh, thanks.” If she thought martinis and macaroons a curious pairing, she hid it well. “And one for the road,” she added, plucking a second macaroon off the plate.

“The only pleasant memory that I have from childhood,” Rubin confided as he set the plate of confections on the glass-topped Noguchi cocktail table, “is Aunt Tovah’s Passover macaroons. Being a smart lad with a voracious sweet tooth, I charmed her out of the recipe before she met her just desserts.” As he sat down on the armchair opposite, he giggled at the tactless pun.

Seating herself on the divan, Edie tucked one leg under her bum, the silk kimono a splash of color against the white leather. A vibrant red poppy in impish full bloom. “I’m still confused as to why the Emerald Tablet is considered a sacred object. If it’s a big emerald, then, yeah, I can see why it’s priceless. But that’s not the same thing as being sacred.”

“According to legend, the Emerald Tablet isn’t made of emeralds but was instead fashioned from a green crystalline substance. Thus the confusing moniker.” Caedmon crossed his legs at the knee. Noticing a hairy shin, he frowned. While Edie and Rubin both seemed perfectly at ease, he felt slightly ridiculous gadding about in his bedclothes.

“Which doesn’t answer the lady’s query,” Rubin said around a chewy mouthful, the man already on his third macaroon. “The Emerald Tablet is not considered sacred; it is sacred. One does not have to believe in a god to respect the sanctity of creation. Oh, for God’s sake! Drink up!” He jutted his chin at their untouched martini glasses. “You’re acting like a pair of Calvinists at a prayer meeting.”

Edie obediently raised her glass. “Earlier, when we were upstairs, Caedmon also mentioned something about the secret of creation. Do you guys mean the Creation with a capital C?”

Rubin spread his arms wide as he gazed at the ceiling, his expression theatrically pious. “ ‘In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.’ Yes, my dear, capital C.” He lowered his arms and smiled. As pleased as Punchinello after he’d committed a truly heinous act. “The Emerald Tablet contains the code to set the whole of Creation into motion.”

“Unlock the code and one can create the primeval atom from which the fabric of time and space comes into existence,” Caedmon explained.

At hearing that, Edie’s jaw nearly came unhinged. “Whoa! You’re talking about the Big Bang, right? Admittedly, quantum physics isn’t my strong suit, but according to the theory, the universe was created when one incredibly dense atom exploded.” No sooner were the words spoken than her brow furrowed. “Now I’m really confused. Is the Emerald Tablet a device of some sort?”

“No, it’s not a device. It is a relic. And as Rubin so aptly put it, the relic contains the code for creation. Sequenced steps to put the process into motion.” Caedmon raised the martini glass to his lips. “A Genesis code, if you will.”

“Okay, we know from the frontispiece that Moses mined the Emerald Tablet, but who made it? How did it become, well, the Emerald Tablet?” Edie’s gaze ricocheted between Caedmon and Rubin, signaling she’d take an answer from either court.

Rubin was the first to hit the ball. “References to the Emerald Tablet have turned up in several Egyptian source materials, most notably the Book of the Dead, which dates to 1500 B.C. And while it’s true that the relic’s authorship is unknown, the honor is most often accorded to the Egyptian god Thoth whom the ancients considered the originator of all forms of knowledge, hidden and seen.”

Edie’s eyes opened wide. “Thoth? How can that be? I thought that Thoth had the body of a man and the head of an ibis. How could a bird-man have created the Emerald Tablet?”

Lurching to his feet, Rubin strode across the room to the baby grand piano and seated himself at the keyboard. “The aforementioned Book of the Dead records that in the Zep Tepi, that being the epoch before the Great Flood some twelve thousand years ago, mysterious visitors appeared in Egypt, the sole survivors of Atlantis. These visitors, who were deemed gods by the more primitive Egyptians, introduced the hidden stream of knowledge to the Nile valley. Thoth, the preeminent visitor of the group, became known as the vehicle of all knowledge, the word made manifest. For it was Thoth who created language, science, and medicine. Thus he was deified as Thoth the Thrice Great.”

Pronouncement made, Rubin wiggled all ten fingers, then launched into a Schubert piano lied. Winterreise, unless he was greatly mistaken. Caedmon wondered at the musical selection, one of those dreary pieces that harkened to the pain of love lost.

As abruptly as it began, the recital ended.

“There are numerous ancient writers who claim that Thoth hid a number of sacred relics and esoteric texts inside a massive pair of magnificently crafted columns,” Caedmon said, untangling a few more strands. “The cache, which included the Emerald Tablet, remained concealed for centuries.”

Still seated at the piano bench, Rubin swiveled in their direction. “Which brings us to the great Egyptian heretic, the pharaoh Akhenaton who ruled during the Eighteenth Dynasty.”

“The charge of heresy was leveled when Akhenaton insisted that there was not a central god in the Egyptian pantheon; there was only one god, the Aten,” Caedmon informed Edie, the conversation having veered to a topic that had long fascinated him. “Aten was declared the Supreme Being of Radiant Light, his divine essence embodied in the rays of the sun disk and manifested in the creative process.”

Edie set her empty martini glass on top of the cocktail table. “If Aten was declared the only god, what happened to the bird-man Thoth?”

Rubin graced her with his trademark Cheshire smile. “Absolutely nothing. The creator of knowledge, Thoth preceded and transcended the entire Egyptian pantheon. During Akhenaton’s reign, the sacred Eye of Thoth was transformed into the Radiant Disk of Aten.”

Edie’s brows drew together. “Sorry. Not following.”

Rubin got up from the piano bench and walked over to the built-in bookcase, where he retrieved a sheet of paper and a pencil. Reseating himself in the Le Corbusier knockoff, he quickly drew three images. When finished, he shoved the sheet of paper in Edie’s direction.

“A thousand words, as they say. The Eye of Thoth symbolizes knowledge.” Rubin tapped the drawing on the far left. Then he tapped the sketch in the middle. “The Radiant Disk of Aten symbolizes the divine creation. And, finally, we have the All-Seeing Eye, which embodies and combines the attributes of both Thoth and Aten. Knowledge wedded to creation. Each builds upon the previous one. But at the core of each symbol, you will find Thoth, who designed and fashioned the Emerald Tablet. Which contains the secret of all knowledge and all creation.”

“And that is the reason why the pharaoh Akhenaton searched the whole of Egypt, desperate to find the Emerald Tablet that had been hidden away by Thoth centuries before.” Caedmon leaned forward, the conversation about to get very interesting. “The task of finding the Emerald Tablet fell to Akhenaton’s most trusted magician and fellow Aten devotee, the aptly named Tuthmose.”

“Aptly named because Tuthmose means ‘son of Thoth.’ ” Rubin’s eyes twinkled with delight, the man well aware of where the conversation was headed.

“And though Tuthmose located the Emerald Tablet in a pillar at Hermopolis, the discovery came too late to save Akhenaton’s empire.” Caedmon reached for a macaroon, his first of the evening. “When the heretical pharaoh died, a rebel army led by the ousted temple priests descended on Akhenaton’s capital city of Armana. It fell to Tuthmose to save the royal court from the impending slaughter.”

“Tuthmose and his entourage fled Egypt in the dead of night, their trusty Hebrew slaves in tow. A mass exodus unlike any other in history,” their host said airily, waving his right hand in the air to punctuate the remark. “And the only reason the venture succeeded is because Tuthmose had the Emerald Tablet. An Egyptian grimoire, the inscriptions carved onto the Emerald Tablet enabled Tuthmose to create the Ark of the Covenant, that legendary weapon of mass destruction.”

“Let me guess… ” Edie paused for dramatic effect. “It was right around this time that Tuthmose, the Egyptian magician, changed his name to Moses.”

“And, while he was at it, created a new religion for the Hebrew slaves. As the Old Testament so vividly recounts, the Hebrews were a belligerent lot in dire need of a calming opiate. To that end, Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible, what we Jews call the Torah. In it, Moses spells out the belief system of the new religion. Then, to keep the Hebrew rabble in line, Moses bequeathed to them ten ironclad rules carved onto two stone tablets. And thus Judaism, the religion of my forebears, was born.” With a clap of his hands, Rubin bounced to his feet. “Another round of martinis?”