“A thousand apologies. After all, I’m just a layperson — what do you call us? Profanes? — deprived of the light of the Great Architect of the Universe?”
“We have nothing to hide.”
“You could have fooled me. But then, everyone has secrets.”
Marcas narrowed his eyes. “So what are yours?” he asked.
“My secrets? Let’s just say I’m an exception. I don’t have secrets. I don’t lead a double life as a cop and a hoodwinked brother. But I do have to admit that it would have given me a leg up in my career.”
“And just maybe it would have knocked that chip off your shoulder. In the meantime, though, you’ll just be pulling off some secret agent body-vanishing cover-up of your friend’s murder.”
Marcas and Jade stared at each other a good ten seconds, and then the cop turned on his heels and walked away.
12
“So what is this stone?” Bashir said to himself when he got to his hideout, a small apartment not far from the archeology institute. Unwrapping the item, he wondered if it was worth more than what he was charging his client. The frenzy for artifacts from Palestine hadn’t slackened since the 1946 find in Qumran — the Dead Sea Scrolls, an ideological bombshell. For conservative Jews the scrolls proved that Christians were nothing more than the descendants of a very minor Jewish sect, the Essenes, who predicted the Apocalypse and ran off to the desert. Jesus was just a bottom-tier prophet. Later, of course, other studies brought into question the Essenien origin of the scrolls, and the famous purification pools that attracted tourists were now thought to be ordinary sedimentation pits.
In any case, ideology didn’t interest Bashir. Money did. Some decadent Westerners were willing to pay a small fortune to get this find to Paris. He pulled out the documents he’d retrieved along with the stone and looked them over. Then he opened a map on his laptop and studied the coastal road that ran along the Sinai Desert from Eilat — a real furnace this time of year. And he’d encounter a number of Egyptian Army roadblocks. Too risky. Egypt was a bad idea.
He clicked again and tried flights from Jordan. He could cross the border when it opened in the morning, although it would be no picnic. Searches were systematic. But he had an idea. He could get to Amman by midmorning.
He reserved the flight from Amman to Paris, via Amsterdam.
13
Marcas rolled the toothpick from the salmon hors d’oeuvre between his fingers. What a ridiculous confrontation he’d just had with the head of security. He was annoyed with himself for backing off, but what good would it have done to argue? She had attacked him for being a Freemason, and nothing would have changed her mind. She would never understand his real commitment and the beauty of the rituals. She saw only the dark side.
He looked around, searching for the movie producer, but she was nowhere to be seen. Half the guests had left, and Jaigu had also disappeared. He was probably writing his report for the ambassador and busy undermining his colleague.
Marcas had turned toward the cloakroom when he heard Pink Martini’s “U Plavu Zoru,” a heady mix of violins, congas, and chanting. He recognized the warm, sensual voice of China Forbes, the group’s vocalist. Marcas closed his eyes to savor the moment.
His reverie didn’t last long. He opened his eyes to the sight of Zewinski standing in front of him, hands on her hips. She was blocking his way.
“We’re needed.”
“We?”
Zewinski held out a crumpled paper. “Yes, we. You and me. The cursed couple. The spook and the hoodwinker, if you prefer. Here. You do know how to read, don’t you?”
Marcas began scanning the fax, bristling at her repeated use of the word “hoodwinker.” The term was a reference to the blindfold a Freemason wore during his initiation, when he acquired knowledge and moved from darkness to light. Marcas put the insult out of his mind and read the missive. “The above-mentioned police officer will make himself immediately available to the consular authorities. He will fully cooperate with the head of security.”
Great. Marcas thrust the paper back at her. “I presume you aren’t responsible for this.”
“You are clever, aren’t you? If it were up to me, I would have my men toss you out of the embassy. It seems that your friend Jaigu told the brass that you were here.”
“Listen, let’s not play games,” Marcas responded. “Neither you nor I want to spend any more time together than necessary. I’ll send you a report tomorrow certifying that I didn’t see anything upstairs. You’ll keep your investigation, and I’ll be left alone. I’ll go back to Paris and that will be that.”
“Deal,” she said, smiling for the first time. “And of course, not a word to your friends at the lodge.”
“That goes without saying. Besides, if I described you to them, they wouldn’t believe me. So much kindness and grace in a single person is the stuff of dreams.”
“It will be a pleasure not to see you again, Inspector.”
“Same to you.”
She shot him a biting look and headed toward a group of guards near the kitchen doors.
Marcas started to leave but changed his mind. Instead, he moved closer to the group. Jade’s voice was raised. She looked furious. One of the men pointed at Marcas. She rolled her eyes.
“What now?” she said.
“Here’s my card. I’m staying at the Zuliani in case you need me,” he said, flashing her a smile.
She looked him up and down. “You’re too kind, but I don’t think I’ll need you or your card. Just drop your letter off at the embassy.”
He surveyed the kitchen. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing. The butler is coming to. He was knocked out, apparently by one of the waitstaff hired for the evening. With any luck, he’ll be able to describe her. Good night,” she said, turning her back on him.
Marcas shrugged and took off for the cloakroom. The spook and the hoodwinker — he liked it. It was just possible that she had a sense of humor.
The vision of the young woman’s body came back to him. Who was twisting the Hiram ritual, a key Freemason observance? Who would push provocation so far as to execute another person in that way? The reenactment of Hiram’s death in Freemason rites was a parable full of philosophical meaning. So what was the message the killer or killers were trying to send?
The murderer had to have inside knowledge. The witness mentioned a woman — a Mason-killing woman. It was grotesque and worrisome. His head spinning, Marcas left the embassy and hailed a cab at the end of the street.
He was fatigued and confused. But in the backseat of the cab, his brain rebooted. He analyzed, compared, and reconstructed the scene. Inside the embassy, a young woman’s life had come to a tragic end. Whether he liked it or not, she was a Freemason sister, and her homicide was now his problem.
The taxi stopped at his hotel, which was in one of the few quiet neighborhoods in the Eternal City. It had long, narrow streets that cars avoided, sidewalks lined with lemon trees, and vast villas built during the fascist era.
Once in his room, he pulled out a leather-bound notebook and leafed through it to an empty page. He carefully opened the red-lacquer pen his son had given him for Father’s Day and set to work.
He jotted down the ritual used by the killer and reviewed his recollections of similar slayings he had heard about in his research of Freemason history. The scholar who had related these stories — the worshipful master at the Trois Lumières Lodge and a specialist in Spanish history — had died ten years earlier. He had recounted two series of attacks against Freemasons one hundred years apart. Marcas had no idea how much truth there was to the stories or if they were just amplifications of the various persecutions brothers had been subjected to over the centuries.