The 34th Degree
Thomas Greanias
METEORA, GREECE, 1943
1
It was on the Feast of the Ascension, forty days after Easter 1943, when an agent of the British Secret Service turned up at the doorstep of the Monastery of the Taborian Light and Philip knew his life as a monk was over.
Wrapped in his black cassock and hood, Philip had been on his knees with his brothers in the sanctuary, celebrating the resurrection and ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ, praying in eager expectation at the blessed hope of His return. This was as he had done for over twenty years, ever since he renounced his former ways and retired to the Monastery of the Taborian Light.
The monastery was perched atop one of the many otherworldly peaks of Meteora, the most remote and mysterious region of Greece. A thousand feet below lay the village of Kastraki, nestled in the foothills. Clinging to its gray granite summit, undisturbed by war or petty human conflicts, the Taborian Light was an impregnable retreat where the Eastern Orthodox monks could witness the unfolding of earthly affairs below and reflect on the eternal.
Here Philip made it his ambition to lead a quiet and peaceful life, just as the apostle Paul had instructed the original church at Thessaloniki. Toward that end, he had allowed his gray hair and beard to grow long, making him seem older than his fifty years, and cloaked in the humility of a monk, he tried to make himself as small and wiry a figure as possible.
But his shapeless cassock could not hide his hard physique or the alert, confident movements of his limbs. Nor could his hood completely veil his eaglelike nose and sharp features. Locals who glimpsed his face during a rare trip to the village never missed his shining black ramlike eyes, set wide apart, gazing placidly from beneath his bushy eyebrows. Their faces would darken with fear, and they would scurry away. Whether they recognized him or not, they instinctively knew he was not one of them.
The sound of hurried footsteps broke Philip’s trance, and his quick black eyes darted up to see Brother Vangelis whisper into the Archimandrite’s ear. The old monk’s face, barely visible behind his great beard and the misty veil of burning incense, fell as he looked at Philip, and the peace that Philip had known for twenty years left him.
So the day has come, Philip thought, and with it the dread.
Philip crossed himself three times before he rose from the floor. With a silent nod, he acknowledged the Archimandrite, took a deep breath, and left the sanctuary.
The visitor was in the narthex, admiring a wall painting of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. He was dressed like a Greek peasant, and with his high forehead, long aesthetic features, and beard, he bore an absurd resemblance to a saint out of some Byzantine icon. But his blue eyes and fair skin betrayed him. When he spoke, it was in perfect Oxford English.
“Commander Lloyd, British Intelligence,” said the Englishman, looking him over. “You must be Philip. You’re smaller than I thought.”
That was what most men thought. Philip lowered his hood and watched Lloyd drop back a couple of steps in fear.
“They were right after all,” said Lloyd, marveling. “The face of a hawk and the eyes of a ram.”
Philip narrowed his eyes. “What do you want, Commander Lloyd of British Intelligence?”
“Why, the same thing the Nazis want,” Lloyd replied. “The Templar Globe. More precisely, what’s inside the globe.”
An uneasiness Philip hadn’t felt since his early days now gripped his heart, and he blinked as though he failed to understand. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what-”
“The Maranatha text,” pressed Lloyd. “The one the apostle Paul wrote to the Thessalonian church in the first century. The one that dates the end of history and the return of Christ.”
2
Philip looked at Lloyd, well bred and impatient. He is as I once was, he thought, and decided to be gentle but firm. “Even if there ever were such a text, Commander, what makes British Intelligence believe it has survived the ages?”
Lloyd had a ready answer. “When Arab Muslims besieged Constantinople in the eighth century, the Byzantine Greeks defending the city were able to save themselves with a miraculous and secret weapon. A compound that burned when it came into contact with water. A substance that became known as Greek Fire. Now, the exact formula used by the Greeks remains a mystery, but we know it included the compound naphthalene palmitate. Better known as napalm.”
“Which is hardly a secret anymore,” Philip observed, “as napalm is commonplace in your bombs and flamethrowers.”
“But the Byzantine Greeks deployed it in a different and, in some ways, more potent form twelve hundred years ago.”
Philip shrugged. “I hardly see what Greek Fire has to do with the Maranatha text.”
“The defenders of Constantinople used Greek Fire aboard their war vessels as a missile to be hurled from a catapult. By destroying the wooden fleets of the Muslim Arabs, Greek Fire blocked the spread of Islam into Europe. Rumors swirled among the ranks of the retreating Muslims that the Byzantine Greeks discovered the formula for their infernal fire encoded in the contents of the legendary Maranatha text. That is why, seven centuries later, when Constantinople finally fell to the Turks in the fifteenth century, bands of Muslim invaders turned over every stone in the city to find it.”
“But the text, I take it, was not to be found,” Philip said guardedly.
“No. During the siege, the Greeks had no choice but to turn to the Knights Templar to smuggle it out of the city to Rome, where it would be safely beyond the reach of the Ottoman Empire. But it never reached Rome. Instead, it ended up with the Freemasons at their Three Globes Lodge in Germany, founded to protect three golden globes from King Solomon’s temple. Two of those globes ended up with the American Freemasons, who buried them beneath Washington, D.C., at the founding of the United States of America. The third remained in Germany until Greece finally won its war of independence from Turkey in 1830 after four hundred years. The third globe, with the Maranatha text inside, was returned to its original home, a secret monastic order descended from the original Thessalonian church, whose members can trace their ancestry through the laying on of hands to the apostle Paul himself.”
“An interesting tale, Commander.”
“Yes, and I have another one for you,” Lloyd said. “This one took place a century later, during the Greco-Turkish war in Asia Minor in 1922. An aide-de-camp to Kemal-the great warrior Hadji Azrael, the Angel of Death-shocked the empire by laying down his sword, renouncing Islam, and embracing the Christian faith of his enemies.”
Philip’s heart skipped a beat. Unconsciously, he placed his left hand over the large, ornate cross that hung from his neck.
Lloyd continued, “There was a secret ceremony with the patriarch of the Eastern Church himself, the laying on of hands, and a new name for this once sworn enemy of Greeks, this killer of Christians. Ultimately, his orders sent him to the monastic order that guarded the legendary Maranatha text he once sought to destroy. He became its protector and wore a gold cross with a sapphire omega set in the center. The very one you seem to be wearing, Philip. Or should I say, Hadji Azrael?”
3
In his former days, Hadji Azrael would have known exactly how to deal with a man like Commander Lloyd of British Intelligence. The Englishman never would have been heard from again. But the Way of Christ demanded mercy. And so Philip reluctantly showed his visitor to the Archimandrite’s chambers, a sparse room with a hard bed and a rough-hewn table around which the three men sat on straw chairs.
The Archimandrite eyed Lloyd and fingered his black worry beads. “How did you find us, Commander Lloyd?”