“We think we’ve got something,” Nadia stated crisply.
Sid continued. “What do you know about George Washington?”
King glanced from the image on his computer screen back to the two women. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“As you may or may not know, Mister Ambassador,” King’s voice came through Langley’s computer speakers, “national archives from around the world have started digitalising ancient documents — UNESCO, the Smithsonian, the British Museum. Pretty much any official document kept in some dusty warehouse somewhere either is, or will be within the next ten or twenty years, available online. We got lucky on this one though.”
Langley studied the images of the three scientists on his computer screen, the sophisticated video-conferencing technology of the U.N. Headquarters and the NATO base allowing a seamless transmission.
“As you know, back at the U.N. we managed to find the original discharge papers for Edward Pryce—”
“The man who was following Kha’um,” Langley said.
“Hunting would be a more apt word, but yeah, that’s him.”
“So how does that help us?”
King explained his logic to Langley, how if they could find Pryce’s handlers, maybe they’d find the Bouda’s mask. “The discharge papers placed Pryce into the custody of a man named Jonathon Hawk. This man Hawk also made a hefty donation to the asylum at the same time.”
“So he’s the man pulling his strings.”
“Initially, yes,” Nadia added.
“Initially?”
“Well, we pretty much know Pryce’s story — he chased Kha’um around the world trying to find the Moon Mask and met his end in a dead-end chamber in Sarisariñama,” Sid added. “So we did some snooping into the life and times of Jonathon Hawk.”
“And what did you find?”
“Additionally to signing Pryce’s discharge papers, Hawk’s signature also appears in a number of different places. Notably, on the billing information we found for two decommissioned ships purchased from the Spanish navy.”
“So he supplied the ships to Pryce,” Langley said. “But who is this ‘Hawk’ character?”
“Jonathon Hawk, among other things,” Sid explained, “was one of the first Freemasons in the New World.”
Langley hadn’t seen that coming. “Freemasons?”
“That’s right.”
“Freemasonry wasn’t firmly established in the Americas until around the 1730’s,” Nadia said, her usual scathing tone in her voice, “but as the migration to your ‘land of the free’ spread out of Europe, so too did the various lodges of England, Scotland and Ireland.”
“What do you know about the Freemasons, sir?” King asked.
“Only what I’ve read in Dan Brown novels,” he joked.
“Well, without boring you too much with the history of Freemasonry, we all know that it is a secret society, or rather, a ‘society with secrets’ as they term it, composed entirely of men.”
“Rich, fat, old men,” Nadia added testily.
“Not necessarily,” King interjected. “In fact, some of the most powerful men in history have been Freemasons.”
“What does any of this have to do with the Moon Mask?” Langley cut in, seeing another scathing response bubbling up from Nadia.
“Well, the trail of the Bouda Mask goes cold once it reaches Jamaica,” Sid continued. “Pryce’s ship is boarded by the British, he is sent to an asylum, and Kha’um is sold to Lord Hamilton’s sugar plantation. But, except for the log of a Lieutenant Percival Lowe of the H.M.S. Swallow which mentions finding Pryce with the mask, there is no further mention of it.”
“I still don’t see how this all fits together.”
“No one really knows all that much about the origins of the Freemasons,” King confessed, “or what goes on in their lodges. Mostly, it is just a bunch of rich, fat old men,” he glanced at Nadia, “playing dress up, acting out ancient rites which most people think stem from Egypt. Powerful people belong to their lodges, to be sure, but they are very much a peaceful organisation. It is not a religion ‘per se’ but it is a ‘brotherhood’ which uses allegorical symbols and codes in what you could call a ‘quest for enlightenment’. But,” he added quickly, seeing Langley’s mounting irritation, “there are also lots and lots of myths surrounding them. Most of them are poppycock, but when Sid and Nadia discovered Pryce’s benefactor’s links to the masons, they delved a bit more deeply into some of these myths.”
“One of the main themes that kept popping up was ‘time travel’,” Sid said.
Langley shifted forward on his chair. In the 1700s, well before they understood anything about tachyons, the main belief surrounding the mask was that, if assembled, it gave its wearer the ability to travel through time.
“They are all crazy conspiracy theories, of course,” Nadia said, “posted on the internet by the same people who claim to have seen UFOs and Bigfoot—”
“But all of them surround the mythical ‘33rd Degree’,” King added; “The great secret that is revealed only to the highest order of the lodges.”
“Lots of the stories we found claim that the secret of the 33rd Degree is the knowledge of how to see the future, look into the past, or even to travel to them and manipulate events,” Sid explained. “One theory even suggested that the origins of the Freemasons stem from time travel. That originally the masons were slaves forced to build the Great Pyramid at Giza but discovered the ability to travel through time and thus escape their masters.”
Langley couldn’t help but smile at the whimsical nature of the stories he was being told. “Surely you’re not suggesting any of this is true?”
“Of course not,” Nadia said. “They are nothing more than modern day myths.”
“But, I think we have proven over the last few days that mere myths deserve more than just a cursory glance,” King argued. “We’ve proven the existence of the Moon Mask and explained, with science, the myth behind its ‘time travelling’ properties. And I think the same goes here. Myths don’t have to be thousands of years old, Mister Ambassador. And this one is only as old as the Freemasons. But who is to say that it doesn’t stem from the same source? Nadia, back at the U.N., you yourself explained to us that the tachyons emitted from the Moon Mask stimulate a specific part of the brain: the Parietal Lobe. Well, it may shock you to discover that I’ve come across this before while researching the legends of the Moon Mask. Extra Sensory Perception, or ESP—”
Nadia tried to cut him off with a scoff but Langley watched as King barrelled straight through her objections.
“Scientists have been studying ESP for years, looking into how some people claim to perceive future events, predict the card you’re holding in your hand, or even commune with the dead—”