Templar's Code

CHAPTER 52

Standing in a darkened doorway on Cecil Court, Saviour Panos aimed the parabolic dish at the second-story window on the opposite building. A few seconds later, he wrinkled his nose, the aroma of cardamom and turmeric wafting through the air from the Curry House on the next block. Too many vile stenches. First patchouli, now Indian spices. What next? A stray dog taking a crap.

After leaving Marnie Pritchard’s flat, he’d returned to his hotel and retrieved the case containing his surveillance equipment. From there, he’d gone straightaway to Cecil Court on the off chance that the lovebirds might still be awake. To his delight, it sounded as though he would get three for the price of two, able to detect a third voice in his headset. He double-checked the jack on the recording device so he could later replay the conversation for Mercurius.

He’d been sent to London to act as Mercurius’s eyes and ears. A task that he’d undertaken with a glad heart. Willing to do anything for the man who rescued him, protected him, loved him. And who had entrusted him with a great and glorious secret. One that involved a “paradigm shift,” as Mercurius liked to call it. The details of which were too arcane, too elusive, for Saviour to grasp. Having only six years of schooling, he didn’t possess the intellectual breadth to comprehend.

Bored by the conversation taking place in the flat across the way, Saviour slipped a hand inside his jacket and removed a box of cigarettes. Thoth. Akhenaton. Tuthmose. So much silly gibberish. He much preferred eavesdropping on the Brit and his woman when they were going at it. Still a lot of gibberish but more exciting.

Wondering how much longer the droning threesome would continue, he flipped open a silver cigarette lighter, his gaze alighting on the eight-pointed star engraved on one side.

The Creator’s star.

How many times had he seen Mercurius staring at the Creator’s star, transfixed? Too many times to count. Usually in an altered state of mind, so far gone that he was unaware of the sights and sounds of this world.

Saviour revered the Creator’s star because Mercurius revered the Creator’s star.

Exhaling a plume of smoke, he glanced upward, noticing the shimmering crescent moon. Like a curved Arabian knife blade in the night sky.

According to Mercurius, men contemplated the night sky to discern the eternal mystery of the heavens. Better than contemplating the eternal agonies of hell, he supposed. Although, personally, he thought heaven and hell coexisted here on earth. Eternity was merely the instantaneous burst of nothingness, the pitiless void known as death.

As the Brit and his woman would soon discover.