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?”