Cædmon suspected that, like him, they were all attempting to solve the mystery of the Cathars’ mountaintop –
Mountain!
‘Bloody hell,’ he whispered, hit with a sudden burst of inspiration.
Sliding his rucksack off his shoulder, he hurriedly loosened the drawstrings, retrieving a small leather-bound journal and a sharpened pencil. His hand visibly shaking, he opened the journal to the first blank page and drew one of the ‘A’s from the medallion cruciform.
His breath caught in his throat.
It’s not an ‘A’ … it’s a mountain peak!
Taken aback by the revelation, Cædmon hitched his hip on to the battlement as he examined the digital photos on the BlackBerry with fresh eyes. If he was right, it meant that, rather than four ‘A’s, there were four mountain peaks depicted on the medallion. A pictogram of the landscape visible from Montségur. Hope renewed, he stared intently at the other engraved symbols.
Certain that the star and the sun represented the heliacal rising of Sirius, that left the moon in the top quadrant to decipher. An age-old symbol found in almost every culture, its meaning and significance was myriad. Birth. Death. Resurrection. Cyclical time. Spiritual light in the dead of night.
But how did any of that relate to the four mountain peaks?
‘ “In the glare of the twelfth hour, the moon shines true,” ’ he quietly recited, the moon not only depicted on the medallion, but specifically mentioned on the reverse inscription.
Could the ‘moon’ be the key to unlocking the riddle of the Montségur Medallion?
Again, he was struck by the strange reference to time. Noon, the twelfth hour of the day, was the apogee of light, when the sun, not the moon, shone at its brightest. Traditionally, ‘noon’ also correlated to the cardinal direction of ‘south’. To this day, the French word ‘midi’ meant ‘noon’ and ‘southern’. As in the Midi-Pyrénées, or southern Pyrenees, where Montségur was located.
What if the ‘moon’ referred to a specific mountain located south of Montségur?
Anxious to test the hypothesis, Cædmon quickly checked the online map feature on his BlackBerry.
‘Damn,’ he muttered a few moments later, not getting a single hit.
On a twenty-first-century map.
Undaunted, he next pulled up an Oxford University search engine for the map collection at the Bodleian Library. Just as he’d hoped, the Bod had a thirteenth-century map of the Languedoc archived online. Heart beating at a brisk tattoo, he clicked on it.
‘Christ.’
Shaking his head in disbelief, Cædmon double-checked the crudely rendered chart. He then lurched to his feet and turned about face, towards the granite peak that loomed on the southern horizon. Mont de la Lune.
‘Moon Mountain’ as it had been called eight hundred years ago.
He barely suppressed the urge to rear his head and shout a joyful hosanna. While the clue might not lead to the Grail, it was a signpost. A new direction in which to venture forth.
On a wing, and even a prayer, so goeth the intrepid Fool.
Anxious to be on his way, Cædmon hurriedly shoved the BlackBerry into his jacket pocket and returned the journal to his rucksack. He then rushed towards the stone steps that led from the ramparts to the courtyard below, an unshaven, khaki-clad wayfarer ready to embark on la quête du Graal.
God help him.
48
Grande Arche Belvedere, Paris
1059 hours
‘Hey, Katie. What’s the matter?’ Finn slid his Oakley sunglasses on to the top of his head. ‘And please don’t tell me that you’re scared of heights.’ Standing on the rooftop of the Grande Arche building, at the eastern side of the belvedere, they had a bird’s-eye-view of the Axe Historique, a.k.a. the Champs-Élysées, thirty-five storeys below. With all of the ultra-modern architecture in the near vicinity, the area resembled a cityscape from a sci-fi movie.
Although Finn didn’t consider it much of a tourist attraction, a crowd nonetheless shuffled along the barricaded perimeter of the rooftop. Bright-blue telescopes were set up every ten feet or so, tourists plopping coins into the slots so they could ooh and ahh over the wonders of Paris magnified umpteen times.
Kate seated herself on a nearby bench. ‘I’m concerned about this so-called “mission op”,’ she told him in a subdued tone of voice. ‘After everything that happened yesterday, is it prudent to go on the offensive?’
‘Grabbing the bull by the balls is the only way that I can get justice for Corporals Dixon and Kelleher. The Dark Angel will pay in a court of law for what she did to my two buddies.’ Homily delivered, Finn figured a little bolstering was in order as Kate was obviously suffering from a bad case of battlefield jitters. ‘Do you have any idea how much it costs to train a special ops soldier? I’ll tell ya – it costs three quarters of a million dollars.’ He paused, letting the fact soak in. ‘In other words, I know what I’m doing. Besides, they have no idea that we’re even here.’ ‘They’ being the Seven, who had their headquarters on the thirty-fifth floor of the Grande Arche. The penthouse suite directly below them.
According to Fabius Jutier’s calendar, an eleven o’clock board meeting of the Seven Research Foundation had been scheduled. With all of the principal players in attendance, it was Finn’s chance to storm the castle gate.
‘You’re right.’ Kate smiled sheepishly. ‘Sorry for being such a nervous Nellie.’
‘Hey, it’s understandable.’ Glad they’d got over the hump without incident, Finn sat down beside her.
Granted, it wasn’t the most comfortable seat in the house, but he’d seen one too many uniformed police prowling around below deck. Just as worrisome, with the exception of the rooftop, there were video cameras mounted everywhere. If his image was captured and matched to his military photo – enabling the authorities to close in on him – he’d have no choice but to abort the mission. And leave Dixie and Johnny K hanging in limbo. No way in hell was he going to let that happen.
In this man’s army, you don’t leave your comrades behind.
Leaning against the metal bench, Finn put an arm around Kate’s shoulders while he took in the view. While the Grande Arche came in at a respectable height, the marble-clad structure was dwarfed by the towering steel and mirrored glass buildings that surrounded it. The reflected light near blinding, Finn slipped his shades back on.
‘I’m curious, Finn … why did you join the army?’
An innocent enough question but, unbeknownst to Kate, it struck a deep chord.
Seventeen years may have come and gone, but Finn could still vividly recall his treeless South Boston neighbourhood with the ramshackle three-storey terraced houses and chain-link fences, the streets lined with dented aluminium trash cans. Oppressive as hell. It became even more oppressive after his brother Mickey joined the McMullen Gang. On more than one occasion, Finn was picked up by Boston’s finest, the bad-ass badges mistaking him for his twin brother. That’s when Finn decided to get out of South Boston before some rival gang member mistook him for Mickey and pulled the trigger. The US Army offered the perfect means of escape.