Templar's Quest

75

Grande Arche, Paris

0528 hours

‘You seem oddly calm for a man who might soon be the guest of honour at his own funeral,’ Cædmon remarked as he and McGuire made their way on foot across the deserted esplanade in front of the Grande Arche. At that somnolent hour, the skyscrapers of La Defense business district had an otherworldly aspect. A forest of steel and glass silhouetted against a slate-grey sky.

‘Got over my fear of death years ago.’ The commando carefully adjusted the canvas rucksack slung across his chest. Inside his Go Bag were six homemade pipe bombs packed in wadded cotton fabric. ‘Being a soldier, I know how I’ll die. I just don’t know the when of it. Only Bob Almighty knows that.’

‘And, how may I ask –’

‘Hail of bullets, buddy boy. Hail of bullets.’

Taken aback by McGuire’s exuberance, and that he considered his violent demise a fait accompli, Cædmon said quietly, ‘You shall be missed when you’re gone.’

‘Gee, didn’t know you cared that much.’

‘I was thinking of Kate.’

The other man’s expression instantly sobered. ‘Yeah, I can’t seem to get her off my mind. I hope to hell she’s all right.’

As do I.

While they were going into the breach armed with six pipe bombs and one Ruger P89 semi-automatic pistol, a pitiful arsenal by any standard, Kate was utterly defenceless.

Unnerved by the eerie silence, Cædmon looked over his left shoulder. The pedestrian esplanade, a concrete meadow in the midst of the steel forest, afforded him an unobstructed view to the east of the Arc de Triomphe L’Étoile. Though he couldn’t see beyond the famous monument, he knew that it was exactly seven kilometres in distance from the first arch on the Axe Historique, the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, to the Grande Arche. Seven. One of the most sacred of all numbers, it symbolized the totality of the Universe, the Heavens conjoined to the Earth. Astral energy fused to telluric energy. How ironic that Ivo Uhlemann’s despicable group was named ‘The Seven’.

Put in mind of an initiate making his way to the holy shrine, he stared at the gleaming white cube. An impressive sight in broad daylight, the Grande Arche was utterly stunning at night, the alabaster marble gleaming with an ethereal lustre. He’d once read that the Cathedral of Notre-Dame would fit perfectly inside the cube’s open space.

Was that merely a coincidence or was it a profound and purposeful design element?

Cædmon suspected the latter, the cathedral having been built over the top of an ancient temple dedicated to Isis, the Egyptian Queen of the Heavens – the reason why the city had originally been called ‘Parisis’. In point of fact, the Axe Historique was the Axis of Isis, the massive ley line perfectly aligned to the heliacal rising of her sacred star Sirius. A star that would appear in sixty minutes after an absence of seventy days. Seven plus zero equals seven.

As Cædmon glanced at the high-rises that flanked the esplanade, he wondered if any of the thousands of Parisians who worked in those office buildings knew that the centrepiece of La Defense, the Grande Arche, was a porte cosmique. A star gate built to harness astral energy.

Though spectacularly modern in execution, the Grande Arche was ancient wisdom articulated in marble and granite. That wisdom had been safeguarded through the centuries by a succession of secret societies: the Knights Templar, the Rosicrucians, the Nine Sisters Lodge, the Egyptian Rite, to name just a few. Deemed heretical, one and all, by the Church Fathers, those underground societies had been the Guardians of the Lost Science. Each group had gleaned a different piece of the puzzle. None of them possessed all of the knowledge. Or the requisite component, the Lapis Exillis, which would have enabled them to generate the Vril force.

Until the Seven Research Foundation retrieved all of the puzzle pieces and put them in order.

A dedicated group of educated zealots – a secret society in the guise of an academic think tank – the Seven Research Foundation intended to exploit the Lost Science. An unknown force of nature, the Vril was derived from fused energies. It had been the power behind the Egyptian civilization. For all he knew, it was the very power that ultimately destroyed that same empire. Since the Vril force was created through the manipulation of astral and telluric energies, if there was the slightest miscalculation, he feared catastrophe would ensue.

Given that it had been more than three thousand years since the Vril force had last been generated, the possibility of error was great.

Well aware that the clock ticked loudly, neither he nor McGuire said a word as they ascended the steps which led to the Grande Arche veranda. Each of them knew what had to be done. Earlier in the evening as they’d prepared the pipe bombs – a laborious endeavour that had taken hours to complete – they’d gone over the mission op in excruciating detail. Their plan was two-pronged: he would find and rescue Kate; McGuire would set and ignite the six pipe bombs.

Reaching the fifty-fourth, and final, step, they hurriedly slipped into the shadows. Moored on the far side of the veranda were the glass elevators used to whisk tourists to the rooftop observation deck. Canopied directly above them was the white canvas ‘cloud’ that spanned the open-ended courtyard. Le Nuage. Cædmon had always thought it more closely resembled a hovering white moth than a floating cirrus cloud. An eyesore from any angle, it had been installed to reduce the wind shear. He peered at the esplanade below. From his elevated position, it was akin to standing at a window that opened on to the world.

As outlined in the mission op, they veered away from the bank of revolving glass doors that led to the north and south lobbies, both of which were manned by a night-duty guard. Instead, they proceeded to a single glass door that was out of the guards’ line of sight. Head bowed so he couldn’t be easily identified on the security camera, McGuire quickly punched an eight-digit code into a keypad affixed to the door jamb. An instant later, the door buzzed open. Because the Grande Arche was a potential terrorist target, all of the building’s security codes were kept on file with the Ministry of Interior, the government office responsible for national security. Calling in an old favour with a computer engineer at Thames House, Cædmon had acquired the necessary codes.

Hopefully the guard stationed at the video monitors would pay them short shrift. Not only did they use an authorized security code, they’d come through a designated after-hours entryway. Just a pair of overworked office cogs getting an early start.

‘Well done,’ he whispered, relieved at the ease with which they’d entered the building.

‘Unlike you, I’m not gonna wrench my arm out its socket to pat myself on the back. Do that and somebody will shoot you in the back for sure,’ McGuire muttered. He glanced at his wristwatch. ‘We’ve only got fifty-two minutes until sunrise.’

‘Right.’

Properly chastened, Cædmon followed the commando down the dim corridor. A long-forgotten line popped into his head: ‘From battle and murder, and from sudden death.’

He hoped to God that it wasn’t a grisly premonition.