If he could, Saviour would gladly kill the blond bastard all over again. And after he killed him again, he’d piss on the grave! Because of the recording, the Brit and his woman knew everything. So, the chickadees had to be smothered. Silenced, once and for all.
Glancing into the darkened foyer, he saw a light emanating from a room at the end of the hallway. The kitchen more than likely. He headed in that direction, careful to keep his movements as smooth and even as possible. An angel of death flitting past.
A few moments later, Saviour surveyed the tidy kitchen with its row of glass containers all neatly lined on the counter. Flour. Beans. Pasta. Sugar. And at the end of the row, a cell phone nesting in its charger.
Perfect.
To call the police, the little birdies will have to come to the kitchen. All he had to do was lie in wait.
About to slip his shoes back on, Saviour saw something out of the corner of his eye — a small metal door in the middle of the kitchen wall. The panel box for the electric circuit breakers. Even more perfect.
He softly padded across the kitchen and opened the gray metal door.
The last piece of the plan just fell into place.
CHAPTER 17
“I’m casting my vote for bonkers,” Edie stated for the record, suspecting that Jason Lovett was spinning an imaginary web. “The hunt for the fabled Templar treasure makes for a great Hollywood movie, but it’s just an urban legend.”
“Many legends have a basis in fact,” Caedmon was quick to inform her just before he pressed the Start button on the digital voice recorder.
Now this is where serendipity and Sarah Sanderson come in. Within days of meeting Tonto Sinclair, I got a text message from a woman I used to date at Brown. Sarah suggested that I check out a centuries-old circular stone tower that’s located on a knoll overlooking the bay in Newport, Rhode Island. A local oddity, nobody’s ever been able to figure out who built the damned thing. Although — and this is where the story gets interesting — the Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazano made mention of the circular tower when he explored Rhode Island in 1524. Verrazano is credited with being the first European dude to come ashore in New England. Curious as hell, I drove to Newport to check out the stone tower for myself. A careful examination of the site convinced me the tower had been built in the fourteenth century by the Knights Templar.
Certain there was a connection between Yawgoog, the Newport Tower, and the Templars, I asked Tonto Sinclair if he knew where exactly Yawgoog and his extended family had lived. While he didn’t know the location of Yawgoog’s cave, he was able to show me where the family maintained an aboveground settlement. As with the carved boulder, the settlement was located in the Arcadia Wilderness Area. Anxious to conduct a field search, I rented a cottage that was conveniently situated at the crossroads just outside the park entrance. Since it’s off-season, I pretty much have the place all to myself. That enabled me to set up a large site perimeter without having to worry about nosey rangers and curious hikers.
On my preliminary field walk of the site, I discovered slightly raised patterns on the ground surface. A little digging revealed that a substantial rubble-work structure, probably a fortification wall, had been erected at the northwest corner of the site. I’m guessing that in its heyday a settlement complex, covering a ten-acre swath, had been built at Arcadia. Although for some unknown reason, all visible traces of the settlement have been obliterated.
Needing to prove that this was a Templar settlement and not an Indian village, I used a metal detector to scan the area. It didn’t take long before I hit gold — literally — nearly shitting on the spot when I excavated a half dozen gold coins minted in the late thirteenth century. I also uncovered bits and pieces of early sixteenth-century weaponry, a sword hilt engraved with a Maltese cross, part of a rosary with a Sacred Heart of Jesus medallion, and a silver ring. The year 1523 was engraved on the rosary medallion. I then checked the historic record and learned that there were Maltese knights aboard Verrazano’s ship the Dauphine.
Since six gold coins and one tarnished ring does not a treasure make, I decided to bring in the heavy artillery and use ground-penetrating radar to scan below the surface. Imagine my surprise when I discovered a mass grave containing at least two hundred bodies on the outskirts of the settlement.
Edie switched off the device. “Whoa! I didn’t see that coming,” she exclaimed, the tale having taken a dark turn.
Caedmon’s brow furrowed. “A mass grave can mean only one thing: After more than two hundred years, the Inquisition finally found the Templars in their New World hideaway.”
“Since we can’t verify that this mass grave even exists, maybe we shouldn’t jump to premature conclusions. Or make sweeping generalizations.”
“When the Age of Exploration began in the fifteenth century, I suspect that the church fathers in Rome belatedly realized the Templars had escaped to America in 1307,” Caedmon conjectured, ignoring her suggestion to put on the brakes.
“Maybe the Narragansett Indians attacked the settlement.”
“The Indian custom was to leave the bodies to rot where they fell. They wouldn’t have dug a burial pit nor razed the settlement to the ground. And the Maltese and Jesuit relics uncovered by Dr. Lovett point to an entirely different villain. In the early sixteenth century, the Jesuits took over the Inquisition. However, as ordained priests, they could spill no blood.”
“Let me guess… They contracted the Knights of Malta to do their wet work.”
“The Maltese knights giving new meaning to the phrase ‘submit or die.’ ”
She shook her head, still trying to make sense of the centuries-old massacre. “This is what I don’t get — why kill the Templars’ descendants? They committed no wrongdoing.”
“One of the more onerous edicts of the Inquisition was to sear the offspring with the heretic’s brand.”
Shuddering, Edie switched on the digital voice recorder.
According to Tonto Sinclair, Yawgoog faded from the scene when the white colonists arrived. Although, and this is key, right before his stage exit, Yawgoog made the Narragansett the custodians of his vast treasure. Soon thereafter, colonial land grabs and King Philip’s War pretty much wiped out the tribe, who have only recently made a come-back. Which means Tonto Sinclair may be the only Narragansett Indian who’s ever heard of Yawgoog’s treasure.
My gut feeling is that the treasure is stashed in Yawgoog’s subterranean hideaway. But the Arcadia Management Area comprises some seventeen thousand acres. The cave could be anywhere. The only clue I have is the carved Templar boulder, which I’m convinced is an encrypted signpost. I also found some weird primitive writing on one of the foundation stones that I excavated, although I doubt the inscription has anything to do with the treasure. Kinda hard to read a signpost that’s buried underground.
Even though I’ve only found six gold coins, there’s no doubt in my mind that we’re talking about the largest treasure in the world. I am so close. I even defaulted on my student loans so I’d have the cash to fund the search. But I’ve hit a roadblock. I need someone who can decipher the damned Templar carving. I’m going to D.C. to see if I can interest Caedmon Aisquith in the job. The guy’s a real academic renegade. I read his book Isis Revealed, and according to his bio, not only is he currently working on a book about the Templars, but he’s also interested in the Ark of the Covenant. While the Templars didn’t leave an inventory list, it’s possible the relic was part of the cache. Since I need a man with Caedmon Aisquith’s skills set, I’ll use the Ark as my calling card. God, I hope he’ll agree to help. If he does, I’ll give him a decent cut of the action. Of course, any number of folks would love to elbow me out of the way. We are, after all, talking about a shitload of money. I can’t be too safe. No one knows about my wilderness crash pad. Or so I thought until I caught someone prowling around. Said he was a hiker who lost his way, but… this guy did not look like a trailblazer. Unless we’re talking the Strip in Vegas. A real Rico Suave decked out in tight cargo pants. That’s why I’ve got the artifacts and all of my research notes well hidden at the cottage.