Destiny

FIFTY

Marcus walked north on El Wad HaGai Street through the Old City, heading toward Via Dolorosa. He thought about the conversation he’d had with Nathan Levy. Why was this happening? Why now and in this place? The vibration of the phone in his pocket disrupted his thoughts. He reached for the cell and read the incoming text: We must meet. It is urgent — tonight. Layla.

Marcus stared at the words across the screen, the sounds of a siren in the distance, the faint pop-pop-pop of gunfire like fireworks out of season. How did she get my number? His phone buzzed in his hand. It was Alicia. “Okay, Paul, I have some information. Eisenhower had ordered Patton to return the Spear of Destiny, AKA, the Holy Lance, and the other religious artifacts back to from where Hitler had stolen them.”

“Where was that?”

“Vienna. The Hofburg Museum.”

“When was the spear returned?”

“It says January 7, 1946.”

“When was it taken from Hitler?”

“About eight months prior…right before he committed suicide on April thirtieth, 1945. Our Army took possession of it in the name of the U.S. government on that date, around 2:10 p.m. Eighty minutes later, Hitler shot himself in the head.”

“So, if it was returned to the museum in January 1946, General Patton had possession of the spear for a few months.”

Alicia lowered her voice. “Apparently so…but what’s the significance?”

Marcus paused, watching the changes of color on the Western Wall, the setting sun painting the old stone wall in shades of burgundy. “It means Patton could have become very used to carrying that thing around before he was ordered to return it. In that time, Patton could have had a replica made and replaced the real thing with it.”

“Maybe he had four replicas made.”

“What do you mean?”

“It says in addition to the spear in Vienna, there is one in a museum cathedral near Echmiadzin, Armenia. Another is in Krakow, Poland, and one is in the Vatican. So that’s four.”

“Could be that they’re all imposters.”

“And it could be no spear is around after two thousand years, either.”

“Alicia, how did General Patton die, and when?”

“Hold a sec.”

Marcus strode past the Dome of the Rock, the oldest existing Islamic building on earth, where dozens of people cued up in a long line to enter. Armed security was heavy, uniformed guards watching everyone who approached.

Alicia said, “Some of this I got from my dad, the rest from research. Patton was injured in a car crash near Mannheim, Germany, on December 9, 1945. He was one of three passengers in his car and was in the rear seat with Major General Hobart Gay. His driver was PFC Horace Woodring. An Army supplies truck, driven by Technical Sergeant Robert L. Thompson, turned in the path of Patton’s driver, and there was a collision. A passenger in the truck was an Allied soldier, James Tower. The report indicates the wreck was minor. No one but Patton was injured. He was taken to an Army hospital at Mannheim where he died December twenty-first from an apparent heart attack.”

“Was an autopsy done?”

“No.”

“Mannheim, Germany. I imagine Patton had made a few enemies during the war. Certainly in Germany.”

“In Russia, too. Dad says Patton was hated by the Russian military, and even by his own boss, Dwight Eisenhower, for condemning Eisenhower’s handling of German POWs.”

Marcus was silent a moment, his mind working timelines and probabilities. “I wonder if your dad knows the background of the two men in the car with Patton at the time of the accident, the driver of the truck and his passenger.”

“I thought you might ask that, so I ran a check on all parties. With the exception of the Brit, James Tower, the rest are long dead. Tower would be in his late eighties. I couldn’t track down a last known address.”

“What if Patton had the spear-head with him? Maybe on him, in a briefcase, or hidden somewhere in the car, when the accident happened? What if Patton didn’t die from his injuries? Maybe he was killed — murdered by someone in the hospital? German, Russian, or someone else—”

“Paul, slow down. What are you saying?”

“What if he was killed so the spear he had wouldn’t have to be returned to him?”

“Go on.”

“What if this person kept the spear after Patton’s death and had a fake made but sold the real thing to someone. Even by 1945, the Spear of Destiny was probably known in many religious and secret power circles as an extremely valuable object. A wealthy person, or someone representing a government — maybe Germany, Russia or even the U.S. — could have brokered a deal if it became known on the black market that the spear was on the auction block.”

“Whoa, Paul, you need to tell me what you’ve discovered in those Newton papers? Newton lived a couple centuries before there was a World War II. The place you’re standing, Israel, didn’t even exist as a nation.”

“But Newton found information that predicted the Jews would return here. What if he may have foreseen World War II or even World War III…who the players would be, how it would start, when…and how it would all end?”

“What have you found?”

“I’m still finding.”

“What do you mean?”

“There is a mention of this spear in Newton’s deciphered coding, and he draws references to it in the Bible including this: ‘He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth. He breaks the bow and shatters the spear…’ Also, Hitler, the man who possessed the spear, started a war. What would it be worth to someone like him today? Or someone in the background — the power and money brokers behind the next Hitler?”

“What’s control of the world’s economies and governments’ worth? I suppose that is why many of the wars over the last two thousand years began.”

“But it’s only in the last seventy years we’ve had nuclear weapons.”

“Paul, you mentioned something about shattering the spear…making wars cease to the ends of the earth. What does that mean?”

“I don’t know, at least not yet. And I wonder if the original spear still exists.”

Marcus looked at the crowd in long, orderly lines at the Dome of the Rock, the golden dome resembling fire smoldering in the sunset. “Shoes must be removed,” said a guard waving a metal detection wand down a man’s back. The people, Muslims mostly, were quiet, faces vacant. They waited their turns to enter the building and see the ancient rock, a stone that is part of the bedrock of both Islam and Judaism. It is believed that the area was where Abraham was going to sacrifice his son Isaac, near the same vicinity where Muslims believe the Prophet Muhammad ascended into heaven.

“Paul, are you still there?” asked Alicia.

“Yes.”

“I forgot one other thing about James Tower, the passenger in the truck that ran into Patton.”

“What?”

“My dad had mentioned, which was corroborated in an obscure report I dug up, that Tower was a man who spoke fluent German, Russian and Italian. Maybe he was an undercover agent using the guise of an Allied soldier to gain closer access to Patton.”