Shadow Ritual (17 page)

“It’s no news that the Nazis had some crazy theories and conducted a lot of horrific experiments,” Marcas said.

“I could go on and on about those experiments and theories. In the death camps, Dr. Mengele injected chemicals into people’s eyes to make them blue. As for the theories, some Nazi scientists held that the Earth was hollow. There’s a tale that the Germans sent an expedition to Antarctica, where they found an underground network of caves and rivers as far as thirty miles down. They were ordered to begin building a fortress there, and some claim to have made contact with extraterrestrials. Believe it or not, there were people who bought that story. We do know for a fact that the Germans sent an expedition to Tibet because of their interest in the occult.”

“How do you know all this?”

“Much has been written over the years. And I have personal knowledge. My father ended up in Dachau. During his final days, he shared everything with a brother. A Jewish brother, a Freemason who forgot nothing. That man, Marek, survived. Until two days ago.”

“Come again?”

“He was murdered in Jerusalem. Marek, an archeologist and expert in ancient inscriptions, was killed the same night as Sophie Dawes. He was the man Sophie was going to see in Jerusalem.”

So this was the man Darsan had told them about.

“Listen, my brother, if I’m going to nail the identity of this killer—or killers—you have to tell me exactly what she was working on,” Marcas said. “What was so interesting in that batch of papers? They were ordinary, as far as I could tell. All I saw were some wild imaginings of a brother with an Egypt fixation. I picked up a shadow of the Templars between the lines. But people wouldn’t kill for that.”

“People would kill for a secret, a secret that could have been in the temple.”

“That again. You know as well as I do that our rituals have nothing to do with the Templars. Any supposed links are fabrications dating from the beginning of the nineteenth century, when scholars had access to archives pillaged during the revolution. Petit-bourgeois parvenus wanted lodges based on knightly traditions. It was a way of giving themselves a noble genealogy. Vanity. Just vanity.”

Jouhanneau raised his voice. “I don’t know enough to judge. Listen, I’m an old crank convinced that it’s my duty to get at the truth. And that truth is the Freemason truth. I’ve been researching our collective memory for years. All we have are scattered fragments. We have no serious and complete scientific study of our roots.”

“And therefore, of our present,” Marcas said.

“That’s right. Since the creation of Freemasonry, we have become one of the most listened to and sometimes most feared forces in the world. And yet nothing seems to justify this kind of reaction. Why has freemasonry become such a powerful entity in the eyes of the world? How has it survived revolutions and dictatorships? These are the questions I ask. And I’m not the only one who is asking.”

“And the answer?”

“The secret! The fabled secret that no one has unlocked. We Freemasons are said to have access to this hidden knowledge without even being aware of it.”

“A secret? Of course there’s a secret,” Marcas said. “Every real Freemason experiences it without being able to explain it. We all know that initiation changes a person. A new dimension opens, and the initiate is transformed, refined like a rough stone under an artisan’s chisel. The secret lies in the ritual.”

“Yes, that we agree on,” Jouhanneau said, leaning forward in his chair. “But why are people killing for those papers? Some believe there’s another secret. Something material. A secret lost but probably found again by the Templars.”

“Here we go again, back to the quest for the Templar secret. It’s a fantasy, like Jesus’s son and the Holy Grail,” Marcas said.

Marc Jouhanneau looked Marcas in the eye. “There’s no room for cynicism here. I’m like you and prefer to leave the Templars and their great mysteries to the profane, who love esoteric secrets. But I do believe they succeeded in getting their hands on a hidden piece of information.”

39

A dirt-like taste filled Bashir’s mouth. His salivary glands tried to fight it off.

The room smelled of mildew and something rancid. Although it was dark, he could make out crates and broken wine racks. He was in a cold, dark cellar. One wrist was handcuffed to the wall and his head hurt. With his free hand, he felt a painful lump behind his ear.

Bashir tried to get up, but his legs refused to function, and with his hand cuffed to the metal bar, he had only four or so inches of maneuvering room.

He collapsed on the stinky mattress and tried to retrace the events: the beating, being chased by the two goons, the crooner at the hotel.

His blood was beginning to circulate again, first in his ankles and then in his thighs. But his legs still felt as though they were caught in a vise. The bitter flavor dissipated, and his eyes adjusted to the shadows. Not more than a yard away, he made out bars. He was in a cell in this basement.

He tried to get up again and felt a sharp pain in his calves. He looked down and saw that steel cables were wrapped around his knees and attached to a ring on the gritty wall. He was barefoot.

Bashir didn’t persist. It was an ingenious mechanism. The more he pulled, the tighter the bonds got. At one point, they would cut off his circulation.

He searched the cell with his eyes, trying to find something he could use to break free, but other than a few shattered bottles, there was nothing useful. He settled into the prone position.

Bashir didn’t understand why Sol hadn’t killed him then and there, once he had delivered the stone. The three fake Jews could have poisoned him on the train and left with it. Why wait? Why the setup at the Plaza?

He would probably have answers soon. There was no sense in torturing himself.

He heard footsteps on the other side of the bars and looked up.

He saw two men walking toward him but couldn’t make out their faces. A key clinked, and the cell door opened slowly. One of the men flipped a switch, and light spread out from a bulb in the ceiling. Bashir blinked.

One of the men was grinning. He seemed almost friendly. He was medium in height, in his sixties, and had a double chin and a thick gray moustache. A canvas apron was tied around his waist. He looked like a bon vivant, with a stout middle giving away a weakness for the pleasures of the table.

Bashir recognized the man’s partner. He was one of the men who had chased him.

Moustache Man approached. “Hello, I’m the gardener. What is your favorite flower?”

Bashir stared at him. He must have misunderstood. “Who are you? Free me now and tell Sol I want to talk to him.”

The jovial man sat down on the edge of the mattress and tapped Bashir’s imprisoned legs.

“Calm down, my friend. You didn’t answer my question. What is your favorite flower?”

The man was crazy. Bashir raised his voice. “I don’t give a damn about your flowers, old man. Go get the boss.”

The man’s eyes seemed to fill with sadness as he reached into a pocket of his apron. He pulled out a pair of pruning shears and opened the safety latch. The blades sprang open. Still smiling, he grabbed Bashir’s left foot and inserted a toe between the blades.

The Palestinian stiffened. “Wait. What do you want?”

The bon vivant shook his head. “I didn’t ever lie to you, did I?” he said.

Was this some kind of funny farm? The man wasn’t making sense. “Lied about what? I don’t understand.”

He barely had time to get it out before the man snipped off his little toe, just like that. It fell to the floor, and blood squirted from Bashir’s foot, splattering the torturer’s apron. Bashir howled.

“I told you. I am the gardener. And an expert gardener uses the right tools. So let’s not spend all day here. I’ll ask my question again. What is your favorite flower?”

Bashir was struggling to free himself, but the metal restraints were just getting tighter.

“You’re out of your mind. I… Roses.”

The gardener gazed at the ceiling, as if he were contemplating Bashir’s response. Then he looked back at Bashir and shook his head. “Wrong answer, my friend. It was the tulip.”

With one slick movement, he chopped off the next toe. Bashir shrieked like a madman and nearly fainted. The second man walked up to him and gave him a hard slap. Now fear was eating away at Bashir like acid. It was stronger than the pain.

“Stop, please. I’ll tell you what you want.”

The gardener stood up, put the pruning shears in his apron, and pulled out a pipe from the other pocket. He took his time filling it with tobacco while Bashir’s blood spurted on the floor.

“Please. I’m going to bleed out.”

A smoky caramel aroma filled the room as the man took a few puffs and looked into the distance.

“I’m the gardener. I told you that, didn’t I?”

Bashir felt himself becoming weaker as the blood drained out of him. The nerves in his foot were screaming, but worse, his mind was starting to go. He had to find a way to soften up his torturer.

“Yes, I know. It’s a fine job.”

The gardener’s face lit up.

“Do you really think so? You’re not just saying that to make me happy? I’m pleased. People have no respect for manual labor these days.”

Bashir’s vision was blurring. He was losing consciousness. He thought he had lost a quart of blood already. The man’s acolyte didn’t say anything, but administered a few more slaps. The gardener took out the shears again and set them down on the mattress.

“No!” Bashir cried out.

“Now, now. Calm down. We’re going to bandage that up to stop the flow,” he said, pulling out some gauze, a small bottle of alcohol, and surgical tape.

His assistant carefully bandaged the foot. The blood stopped flowing.

“I now have enough soil for my little protégés. By the way, you don’t have AIDS or some other virus like that, do you? My flowers are very sensitive.”

“I don’t understand.”

The gardener stood up and pulled out a trowel and a plastic bag filled with something.

“What we have here is some soil that I’ve enhanced, so to speak,” he said, plunging the trowel into the bag. “You see, my biologist friends have explained that blood is an excellent fertilizer for my flowers. I’ve been testing this theory for a number of years, and to tell the truth, I’m quite pleased with the results.”

Bashir stiffened. How many people had he tortured?

“I was just teasing you with my question about your favorite flower. Regardless of your answer, I would have cut off your toes. It’s more poetic that way. So this is what’s going to happen. You’ll rest up a bit while I take care of my roses, and then I’ll come back.”

Bashir didn’t dare say anything. He was too afraid the gardener would cut off another toe. The man touched his foot gently.

“You have another eight more toes, and then you have ten fingers, so let’s make the most of it.”

The two men left the cell, locking him in.

Bashir cried out, “What do you want, for God’s sake?”

The gardener looked back at him as if he were a child who didn’t understand.

“I don’t know about the others, but I have a hundred or so roses to feed,” he said.

He took a step back toward the cell.

“I wasn’t being entirely honest.” The gardener’s voice sounded dreamy.

“I don’t cut off just toes. I keep the best for last.”

Bashir shrieked.

40

Marcas stood up and started pacing the room.

“Why do you think there’s some secret information?”

“My father worked on experiments linked to that secret.”

“What exactly? We’ve already established that the Nazis did a lot of god-awful experiments.”

“They were looking for some way to connect with the gods. But like all doors to the infinite, it could lead to either heaven or hell.”

“I’m not following,” Marcas said, looking at his watch.

“Imagine a celestial drug that would allow you to communicate directly with the origin and power of life, with what we Freemasons call the Grand Architect of the Universe. And imagine what the Nazis could have done with that. For them, it was the soma, a Vedic ritual drink. It was an Aryan grail. That substance was believed to be an integral part of a lost Freemason ritual: the shadow ritual.”

“That’s crazy,” Marcas said. “A secret lost in antiquity, a kind of ecstasy to the power of—”

“To the power of infinity.”

“No, I don’t buy it.”

“I don’t expect you to understand, but my father died for this secret, and Marek consecrated his life to the quest—he had vowed to uncover it to honor my father. Last month he found an engraved stone, the Tebah Stone, which mentioned a substance similar to the one the Nazis were looking for. He was murdered, and the stone is gone.”

“Okay, let’s go over it again. We’re talking about an ancient secret, a kind of philter, a drink that people knew about and then lost. It was the famous soma of the ancients, the drink that makes you resemble the gods.”

Jouhanneau smiled. “That’s right. Since time immemorial, we’ve known that certain plants—well, the molecules in the plants—reveal things about the human soul.”

“And do you know which plants were in this drink?”

“Sophie identified one of them in a document we got back from the Russians. The first person to have access to the formula could, in theory, produce a one-of-a-kind elixir that would open new doors of perception, as Aldous Huxley called them. And it would be good or evil, depending on who performed the ritual.”

“Okay, so tell me the ingredient that you know about.”

“Have you heard of Saint Anthony’s fire?

“No.”

“In 1039, in central France there was an epidemic of ‘holy fire,’ as it was called, and hundreds of farmers went crazy, suffering unbearable hallucinations.”

“What caused it?”

“
Claviceps paspali
or
Claviceps purpurea
. It’s an ergot fungus that grows on cereals including rye, wheat, and barley. In 1921, scientists isolated hallucinogenic alkaloids from this parasitic fungus. In the nineteen forties a chemist purified them and came up with lysergic acid diethylamide, also known as LSD, the drug of choice for hippies in the nineteen sixties and seventies. It’s very powerful. In the Eleusinian Mysteries dedicated to Persephone, the Greek goddess of hell is represented with a sheaf of wheat.”