The Templar's Code

CHAPTER 57

♫Moses supposes his toes are roses, but Moses supposes erroneously. ♫

Alone in the flat, Rubin Woolf sang the silly ditty in a booming voice. Old Hollywood musicals were a secret obsession, Singin’ in the Rain one of his favorites.

Still annoyed that he couldn’t accompany Peter Willoughby-Jones to Craven Street, he trudged upstairs. He preferred to await the eleven o’clock appointment in the comfort of his boudoir. Opening the door at the top of the landing, he entered the foyer.

Almost immediately, his gaze went to one of the photographs displayed on top of the court cabinet. Hit with an inexplicable burst of nostalgia, he walked over and picked up the framed picture. Long moments passed as he stared at the scowling, bare-chested punk rocker who had glared at the camera that memorable night. 1977. The Pegasus. As he recalled, one had to scowl just to get past the bouncer.

He carefully replaced the photograph. Then, lost in thought, he idly watched the slow-moving minute hand on the German-made cuckoo clock, counting the seconds until the little shutters on the clock flew open, the nesting chick shrilly announcing the hour.

He should have chucked the gaudy old-fashioned clock years ago. Should have. But could never summon the courage to toss it on the rubbish heap. A glutton for punishment, he kept the annoying cuckoo clock because it was the only memento he had of his long-dead father.

And, as fate would have it, the clock was the only memento that Chaim Woolf had of that violent night in 1938 when the Jewish community in Berlin was rudely awakened in the middle of the night by the sound of smashing glass and raucous jeers, the SS banging at their doors.

Kristallnacht.

The spark that ignited the Holocaust.

Chaim had been a lad of eight, forced to witness an unspeakable atrocity — his father, Menachem Woolf, a veteran of the Great War, foolishly standing his ground with a rusty firearm as the windows of Menachem’s antiquarian shop had been smashed with a sledgehammer, as the books and volumes that lined his antiquarian shop were tossed onto a fiery bonfire. The SS officer in charge acted with the detached efficiency for which the German people pride themselves: He put a single bullet in Menachem Woolf’s head, killing him on the spot. Then, to show he was not the monster that the screaming Chaim accused him of being, he removed the handcrafted Bavarian cuckoo clock from the wall. The only item in the room that had not yet been smashed. Handing it to the tearful child, he patted Chaim’s head and said, “Never resist — and never forget.”

Indeed, that night stayed with Chaim Woolf for the rest of his life. Even after his mother, two small children in tow, paid a small fortune for the three British visas that secured them safe passage out of Berlin. They arrived in England just in time for the blitzkrieg of German bombs that nightly rained down on the scurrying, frightened denizens of London.

Rubin learned of these things from his aunt Tovah. She’d not been given a cuckoo clock on that long-ago night. Instead, she’d been bequeathed a badly scarred face from having been shoved into the bonfire by a gang of local boys intent on “joining the fun.” It was his aunt Tovah who told Rubin about that monstrous episode, hoping he’d understand why, each year on November 10, his father would sit for hours on end, in the dark, sobbing uncontrollably. Rubin only understood that living with his father was akin to living with a ghost. Chaim Woolf walked and talked and took meals with his family, but he had no ties or bonds with the living.

Rubin had always asserted, rather strenuously in fact, that he didn’t care. What use did he have for a father who lacked the emotional fortitude to overcome his inner demons? Chaim Woolf’s retreat from the world bespoke a weakness that made his son cringe.

Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.

As the line of poetry popped into his head, Rubin derisively snorted. Sylvia Plath. Really. How pathetic. Besides, what need did he have for a father? What need did anyone have?

“I have my books. I am content,” he reassured himself as he entered the boudoir. Originally a staid Victorian parlor, ten years ago he’d completely transformed the space, paying a small fortune to have a room in a half-timber Winchester abode completely dismantled, the woodwork shipped to Cecil Court and reassembled. The paneled walls exemplified the very best of the era, masculine exuberance wedded to feminine civility.

He suspected that his father had never known an exuberant day in his life.

No doubt that was the reason why Rubin had been drawn to the scowling anarchists who’d invaded the London club scene in the 1970s. But, like the punk-rock movement itself, the love affair had been short-lived. Rubin had always required an intellectual challenge to maintain a long-term interest.

Enter Sir Francis Bacon.

He’d often wondered if his family history didn’t have something to do with his fascination with Sir Francis. A Renaissance man extraordinaire, Sir Francis was at once philosopher, courtier, and esoteric adept. But more important, Sir Francis Bacon was a tolerant and benevolent man of God.

Walking over to the bed, he picked up the Mylar-covered frontispiece. In the New Atlantis, Jews played a prominent role in society and harmoniously lived side by side with their Christian neighbors. The children of the Old Covenant united with those of the New. A paradise not seen since Adam and Eve blithely strolled their earthly garden. And the adhesive that bound the residents of Bacon’s utopian realm was the hidden stream of knowledge.

Knowledge is power.

I am a witness to knowledge.

Heady sentiments made manifest by the alchemical power inherent in the Emerald Tablet. Sacred teachings whose roots extended to the time before the pharaohs. To the time when Thoth and his fellow refugees fled the destruction of Atlantis.

No different from when the German Jews fled from the Nazi thugs.

Rubin chortled, cynical enough to be amused by the comparison.

In the foyer, the cuckoo annoyingly announced the quarter hour. Fifteen minutes late. Royally pissed, he strode over to the window and stared at the gloomy montage below. A few shops kept Sunday hours. Most were closed. Christians were not as rigid as Jews when it came to keeping their Sabbath.

As if on cue, the downstairs bell rang.

“About time,” he muttered as he turned away from the window.

Annoyed at being made to wait, he took his time descending the steps. Let the bastard stand in the rain a bit longer. Time was a valuable commodity, tardiness a tiresome character flaw.

Again, the bell rang.

Reaching the ground floor, he stormed across the dimly lit bookshop, in high dudgeon.

“Ask not for whom the bell tolls, you bloody impatient bastard, it tolls for—”

Unbolting the lock, Rubin swung open the shop door.

On the other side of the threshold stood a dark-haired man. Six feet in height, he had about him a classical beauty that harkened to the ancient world. A marble kouros come to life. Carved by the hand of the master sculptor Phidias.

Admittedly taken aback, Rubin could see that, like the kouroi of ancient Greece, his beautiful visitor was the living, breathing embodiment of the ideal male form.

For several moments they mutely stared at one another.

The beautiful stranger smiled. “I’m Saviour Panos. We have an eleven o’clock appointment. Please accept my apology for being a few minutes late. I hope that you weren’t inconvenienced.”

“Not in the least,” Rubin assured him. He tugged at the bottom of his vest, self-consciously aware of his middle-aged paunch.

“May I come inside?”

“Where are my manners? Of course, please come in,” Rubin invited. Then, as an afterthought, he added, “I trust that you like martinis.”