The screen went black and the sound ceased with a loud click. Sam slowly looked up at the other two, sitting down at Father Harper’s desk. He shrugged, “I guess we’re going to Jerusalem.”
“Wait a minute, Sam,” Father Harper said. “Has everyone suddenly forgotten about Nina?”
“No,” Jan Harris replied, “but remember that, without Mr. Purdue we’ll have no way of confronting these Templars. Am I right?”
“I’m just concerned about the time we’re wasting,” the priest explained.
Sam came to sit down with them. “I know, Father. I’m aware of the time constraints, but we have to get Purdue. I don’t give two shits about his new girlfriend or the treasure he is after. Once we’re with him, it will be easier to cock his hammer to help us. At this distance, given his obvious obsession with this… Countess… we will not be able to get through to him.”
“Alright,” Harris agreed, “I suppose we leave for Jerusalem in the morning?”
“Aye,” Sam said. “But first we need to know everything about these so-called Templars. Between Father Harper and Nina’s notes, we should be able to gather enough detail about them, right Father?”
The priest looked distraught, but he lifted his cup. “Aye, Sam.”
At once, Sam brought forth the notes Dr. Hooper had given him containing Nina’s observations. He spread out the pages on the desk of the church office, while Father Harper opened the window for some daylight illumination to compliment the lights.
“According to Nina’s notes, each of these cadavers boasted the same sigil, the sigil of the soldiers,” Sam started explaining while Jan Harris filmed him. “But instead of the Templars’ well known emblem, the sigil doesn’t state that these men are soldiers of Christ, just… soldiers.”
“That is accurate,” Father Harper affirmed. “These men are apostates.”
At the quizzical stares of the other two, he felt the need to explain his statement. The large priest leaned on the desk, pointing at the rough sketch Nina had made of the sigils tattooed on the dead bodies.
“Apostates of Christ,” Harris clarified, assuming she had understood correctly. But Father Harper shook his head. His voice was toned down, yet his words seemed to pierce their ears with the intensity of a shofar, echoing through ages of theology.
“Apostates of piety, of religion, and of duty,” he explained. “These are men who have not forgotten the stain on the name of their noble forefathers’ efforts and the barbaric way in which innocent knights had been dispatched — in the name of avarice.”
To Harris it felt as if the whole church hushed for this preacher to speak his doctrines, to tell the story of bygone heroes and their atrocious treatment. She felt her skin crawl with some kind of veneration as Father Harper paced slowly up and down in front of his lit hearth, recounting.
“The bloodlines of the Templar Knights from all across Europe became diluted as more and more branches came into being. For example, Order of Montesa, the Order of Christ, were some of the new sects founded by the kings of Spain and Portugal to protect their Templar Knights by quietly joining into the new orders, ceding Templar lands to them to evade the wrath of their persecutors. By the 16th Century, all that remained of them, according to popular belief, were some organizations of differing loyalties. Brotherhoods and clandestine allegiances were formed and disbanded as they assimilated, leading to better known affiliates such as the Freemasons.”
“So, that is what Ayer and his men are? Masons?” Sam asked. “But why the practice of stoning that is so common to Middle Eastern faiths?”
“You must do more research, my friends. Do not assume that because a practice is demonized for belonging to an undesirable culture or a threatening race, that that is all they are about. This is precisely the misplaced assumptions that are born from the lack of information, of education, that is perpetuated by the media and popular culture. Not all Muslims are suicidal maniacs. Not all Christians,” he looked hard at Sam, “are pissy and self-righteous hypocrites. Not all hippies are stoners and not all Scots are hard drinkers…” He stopped, shrugging. “Okay, maybe the last one is a bad example.”
Sam smiled, but Jan Harris was too spellbound by the powerful voice and wisdom that came from the attractive priest. “My point is, friends, that just because a woman was to be stoned to death, it does not make her attackers decidedly Islamic, does it? Such crimes have been used during wars throughout ancient history until today, simply because rocks do the trick when men run out of bullets.”
“Jesus,” Harris said.
Both men looked at her, merely because she said something, but at that point, Harris felt guilty just for being feminine. “Sorry.”
Sam smirked, but the need for illumination prompted him to pry some more. “What happened to these bloodlines? Where does Ayer fit in?”
It was time for Father Harper to open a very well guarded book of his past. Even according to his own rule, revealing what he had done before becoming a priest was now a matter of life and death. Sam and Jan had to know what he knew, since their very lives depended on it.
“His full name is Ayer Molay, Sam. He is a distant descendent of one of the original Templar Masters who was burned for heresy in Paris,” the priest revealed. “From what I learned from his father, whom I also had the pleasure of serving with, the accusations of devil worship were a deliberate and wicked misconception brought to aggravate charges against the Templars.”
“Aye, we all heard about the goat they supposedly worshiped,” Sam acknowledged, his fingers knotted into a clumsy canopy in front of him as he took in the information.
“Baphomet,” Harris added. “The goat was called Baphomet. Many say that it is a derivative of Mahommet.”
“Esoteric scholars speculate that the name is Kabbalistic, and when read backwards means the Lord of the Temple,” Father Harper told Harris. He tore a piece of paper from his note pad next to the telephone and wrote in big black letters — ‘TEM OHP AB’.
Outside the stained glass windows, thunder clapped, starling them. Sam guffawed and looked at his companions with a sincere chill. “Speak of the Devil.”
25
Revealing the Hidden
“Consider that our wake-up call, gentlemen,” Harris said, after the rumble of the coming storm fell into a low growl over the ocean. “Ayer gave us twenty four hours to deliver Toshana or Nina will fall to the history she so loves.”
Sam sneered at her.
“That is verbatim what he said, Sam. Not my words,” she assured him with fight in her voice. “God, I am not that depraved. I happen to know Dr. Gould’s work and I happen to have great respect for her. Unlike you, she’s earned my respect.”
“Harris, I could not give a damn whether you respect me or not. In fact, you would only be returning the favor,” Sam replied, not even caring to accompany his disrespect with a proper tone.
“To find Toshana, we have to find out who she is,” Father Harper asserted. “We have to know what she is to Ayer and his men.”
Harris sighed. “I tried, Father, but he refuses to tell me anything. All he wants is that woman, above all things. He does not care about anything else, least of all, furnishing me with reasons or giving me any information. His orders are simply to get Sam to deliver Toshana or Nina dies. Even the footage of Sam’s little misdemeanor,” she jested spitefully, “is entirely up to my discretion.”