The Rose Conspiracy (45 page)

“Okay, so the question,” Julia said, “was about tonight's theme. Which is, what? Alchemy? I wouldn't ever have pegged you for a guy who would give that concept any extra thought, were it not for your uncle's ideas. So, you don't believe that stuff, right?”

“Yes and no,” Blackstone answered cautiously.

“Oh, this ought to be good,” Julia chided him.

“First,” Blackstone said, “no, on a factual basis, I don't accept that stuff—and I also don't go for the crank theories about the ‘area 54' alien autopsy, the inside job on the Kennedy assassination, or Loch Ness monster either.”

“So, where does the ‘yes' part of the ‘yes and no' come in?”

“It's like this,” he said, looking down at the table that separated them. “I have to shave every morning. As a result, I have to look at myself in the mirror. Every day. As a result I've thought about giving up shaving. But I don't think that's a logical solution. What I mean is this…in terms of my personal life…I think I need a little alchemy, or something. In other words, I need to take the base things in my life and find a way to extract some gold out of them.”

The lights blinked overhead, signaling that the play would begin in a few minutes. Blackstone and Julia quickly stood up from the table and hurried down the red-carpeted corridors to their seats.

Elizabethan-era theater was usually not Julia's favorite genre. But it quickly became obvious why Blackstone wanted to see this particular play as she studied the playbill's synopsis of the theater piece.

Satirizing the mores and foibles of London in 1610, Ben Jonson's play
showed the work of some scam artists who took over a wealthy house vacated during the plague. One posed as an alchemist who tried to use his magic acumen as a means of bilking others.

In the first act of the play, one of the characters announced boldly, “This is the day I am to perfect for him the magisterium, our great work, the stone.”

“The philosopher's stone,” Julia murmured as she sat next to Blackstone.

As the play progressed, the theme became even clearer, even stunning. A character looked at the audience and declared, “Do you think I fable you? I assure you, he that has once the flower of the sun, the perfect ruby, which we call elixir…In eight and twenty days, I'll make an old man of fourscore a child.”

“ ‘Flower of the sun'—‘perfect ruby'—even the reference to the elixir,” Julia whispered excitedly to Blackstone next to her. “It's as if old Ben Jonson has heard about the very same ‘rose of 6,' the red flower from the ‘elixir tree' imbedded in crystal that Horace Langley's note talked about—and that John Wilkes Booth wrote about in his diary. Maybe your uncle's interpretation was right after all.”

Blackstone glanced back at Julia and nodded. Even he was impressed.

“Okay, I have to admit,” Blackstone whispered back, “the similarities between the ‘ruby flower elixir' reference in Ben Jonson's play produced in 1610 and the Langley note that copied the Booth diary…” Blackstone hesitated to say it.

But he finally did.

“The similarities are incredible.”

CHAPTER 56

S
o you're being very quiet,” Julia said as they walked to Blackstone's car from the Kennedy Center after the play.

“The premise of
The Alchemist
seemed hauntingly familiar,” Blackstone said.

“No question about it,” Julia said.

“A few decades after the first production of Jonson's play,” Blackstone said, walking slowly next to her, “you then have Elias Ashmole, the Gnostic leader of the speculative Freemasons in England—you will recall my uncle talking about him—Ashmole, tutored by occult followers of alchemy, is then pursuing seriously himself the claims of esoteric alchemy. And his pursuit was obviously continued by Dr. Robert Plot, the professor of chemistry who was the first curator of Ashmole's museum. It is clear that there was a group of these occult believers in the seventeenth century who really did believe they were on the cusp of some titanic discovery. And it is also clear that this wild chase for the key to physical immortality had gone on for centuries before them—perhaps for millennia.”

Julia was listening carefully. Then she spoke up.

“What are you saying?” she asked.

“Let me ask you a question,” Blackstone said. “What does all this tell you? I mean, in a very personal, private way. What do you feel about all that, in the quiet corners of your brain?”

“Is this a test?” she said laughing.

“Sort of,” Blackstone replied.

“Well, at least you're being honest,” she replied. “Okay. Well, you know I had religious training in the Catholic Church as a child. I suppose that always has some influence on your view on what you might describe as the ultimate issues.”

“So where do you stand on immortality? On life after death—all that,” Blackstone shot back.

“Wow,” she said with a sigh. “I thought you knew where I stood on that kind of thing, given our prior relationship…and intimacy. I thought we had talked about this.”

“We never discussed it,” Blackstone said.

“Are you sure?” Julia asked.

“Yes, positive,” Blackstone replied firmly. “Believe me, I would have remembered.”

“Alright,” Julia said, venturing ahead after a moment of hesitation. “I believe there is a God. I do struggle with the faith question. But given that there is a divine force out there somewhere, that would mean there is a spiritual dimension. And if there is a spiritual plane to existence, then immortality…eternal life…those kinds of things would be feasible.”

“Sounds logical enough—if we assume your premise, that is. About God.”

“And where do you stand on the issue?” Julia asked, as they reached his car in the parking ramp.

Blackstone paused to reflect before he answered. “I think,” he responded quietly, “that Ben Jonson's play explained it pretty well. Two main realities. First, there is historical proof of a consistent yearning, from some part of the human psyche, that crosses geography and culture and time, some part of being human that wants to reach out to the eternal—the spiritual—to achieve some kind of immortality. So as a result, we get the alchemists, and the esoteric philosophers, and the Freemasons, as well as the more traditional clergy and religionists.”

“Okay, that's your first ‘reality,' then. The thirst for the spiritual. The eternal,” Julia said. “So, what's the second?”

“The reality of human greed and trickery,” Blackstone said. “Jonson's play satirized it as comedy. But he was being very accurate in pointing it out.”

Then Blackstone added a thought.

“I think those two forces—immortality and greed—may be closer to us in Vinnie's case then we have any idea,” he said.

Julia gave him a funny look. Startled and probing.

“But how do you separate the one from the other? Spiritual truth from trickery,” Julia asked, “without mixing them up, or being entirely cynical? How do you do that?”

“That's exactly what I plan on doing on day one of Vinnie Archmont's trial,” Blackstone said.

As he walked around to open the door for her on the passenger side of his convertible, Julia added one more thought.

“You know, I wasn't talking about your legal case when I asked that question,” she said. “I was talking about your
life.
”

As Blackstone drove Julia home, the two of them were quiet.

When he reached her apartment in Bethesda and walked her to the door he told her about his plans for the next day.

“I had Frieda book me a flight to London for tomorrow,” Blackstone said. “It's a quick trip. Out and back. There's something I have to ask Lord Dee. And I have to ask it immediately.”

“Vinnie's trial is just five days away,” Julia said. “I'm surprised you're taking an international trip now. It must be important.”

“It is,” was all that Blackstone said.

He took Julia's hand and squeezed it, and thanked her for joining him that night.

Julia took her other hand and covered Blackstone's and squeezed back.

“I enjoyed this,” she said with a smile. “You know, against all odds…you may be a nice guy after all.”

As Blackstone was motoring home he received a call on his cell phone from Tully Tullinger.

“Hey, Professor,” Tully said. “Are you sitting down?”

“I better be,” Blackstone cracked. “I'm driving.”

“Reminds me of a story about the guy who drove his car without sitting down,” Tully replied. “But I'll spare you that. Let me get down to brass tacks.”

“Please do. You're calling on Horace Langley?”

“Yes,” Tully said. “Well, I came up with one thing.”

“Shoot.”

“The guy was a moderately addicted gambler, it appears.”

“How moderately?'

“He visited Atlantic City on a regular basis. Rang up some pretty hefty bills at the casinos.”

“How much did he owe?”

“Close to a million bucks,” Tully said. “Nine hundred thousand and change.”

“I never knew they let guys drive up balances like that,” Blackstone said.

“They usually don't,” Tully said. “Only if they are regulars and they roll high enough, which he was and he did. But they also ask for some pricey collateral. Which, for some reason, they goofed and didn't get from him.”

“So, Secretary Langley owed some big money from gambling. And then there is the problem with the potential stain on his professional reputation as the head of a renowned place like the Smithsonian Institution,” Blackstone observed.

“Yeah, I guess you put it right enough,” Tully said.

“One more thing,” Blackstone asked. “Did you dig up any connection between Langley and the city of Savannah, Georgia?”

“Rings a bell,” Tully said. “Give me a second to look over my notes.”

After a minute, Tully spoke up.

“Okay, here it is. One of the guys I talked to actually said that Langley mentioned going down to Savannah once—he was heading there, he said, after his gambling junket at one of the casinos.”

“Didn't say why he was planning on going to Savannah?” Blackstone said.

“Nope,” Tully said. “Anyway, sometimes he went to Atlantic City alone. Sometimes he took a gambling buddy with him. I couldn't get any names, though. I'll type up my notes and send them over to you.”

“Fine. Thanks, Tully,” Blackstone said. “Now I only have one more job for you on this case. And you will actually have a few days to accomplish it. Do you have ways to access adoption files?”

“Yeah…well, you know, they are closed to the public,” he said.

“Of course,” Blackstone said. “But Vinnie signed an omnibus authorization and release and power of attorney for all her records at the beginning of this case to give us complete carte blanche.”

“True, true,” Tully said. “But it's still not that easy. When do you need it?”

“I need Vinnie's adoption records by the first day of trial.”

“I think that's doable.”

“Now I'm heading home. If I'm lucky I will catch a little sleep tonight before flying out tomorrow.”

“Oh, to where?” Tully asked.

“Merry old England,” Blackstone said. “The land where time stands still.”

CHAPTER 57