C. Palov - Templar's Code

Startled by the candid remarks followed by the unexpected query, he fumbled a bit. “Er, yes. No doubt cemeteries still maintain a pauper’s section.” For the poor always ye have with you, he thought, but didn’t say, not wanting to unintentionally cause offense. Then, inspired, he said, “I could help you locate the grave site.”

The pucker deepened. “Why? She’s not there. She was never there. You know, high on arrival.”

Caedmon presumed the odd remark referred to her mother’s heroin overdose.

“The here and now, that’s all we have,” Edie continued as she stowed the digital cameral in her shoulder satchel. “Take your pleasures where you can because tomorrow the sheriff’s deputy might slap an eviction notice on the trailer door. Although, don’t get me wrong, there were times when my mother and I were very tight. Just two little hamsters on the wheel of life.” Smiling wistfully, she made a twirling motion with her fingers.

He placed a hand on her shoulder and pulled her toward him, wrapping his arms around her fuchsia-clad torso. His Edie. So beautiful. So intrepid . And at times so incredibly fragile.

“I didn’t say that to elicit your sympathy.”

“I know.” He rested his chin on top of her head.

“Change of subject: Is it just me, or is there something weirdly seductive about being in a graveyard?” Tilting her head, Edie peered up at him as she slid her hands under his wool blazer. “No need to answer. Your heartbeat just accelerated a notch.”

“Close contact has that effect.”

She affected a disappointed moué. “Here I thought we had something special, but it seems that a close encounter with any woman can—”

“Not true,” he interjected, pulling her even closer. “And you’re the only woman of my acquaintance who can do this to me.” He purposefully pressed himself against her midsection.

“Oh my. Now my pulse just quickened.”

Throwing back his head, he laughed.

“Hel-lo! That remark was supposed to turn you on not make you laugh uproariously.”

“My apologies.” He softly nuzzled the corner of her mouth before moving to a flushed cheek, then a shell-colored lobe, all the while breathing in her scent, a heady vanilla. Raising a hand, he smoothed a flyaway curl from her face.

Quite brazenly, Edie pressed her breasts against his chest, bringing the two of them into even closer contact. “ Now you may kiss me.”

“Thy will be done.”

However, not as she may have intended. For what began as a sweetly romantic kiss quickly snowballed into something decidedly carnal. A passionate kaleidoscope of twisting mouths, grasping hands, and muffled whimpers.

Aware of their surroundings, he reluctantly brought it to a breathless close.

An impassioned silence vibrated between them. Accentuated by the strains of Spanish flamenco, a street musician giving an impromptu concert on the other side of the brick wall.

Edie heaved a lusty sigh. “Wow . . . almost like a mariachi band playing under my balcony window.”

His mood greatly improved, he took Edie by the elbow and steered her away from the great man’s grave site. “Fancy a stroll?”

“Think we should risk it?” She glanced heavenward, the skies inundated with swollen clouds saturated with unshed rain. “Maybe we should scurry back to the hotel.”

“Live dangerously, I say. One can’t always have a brolly at the ready.”

“I’ve got a better idea.” Pulling away from him, she stepped over to a raised funerary slab, the surface pitted by acid rain. Without a care for the dearly departed, she unceremoniously parked her backside. “Let’s do some cyber sleuthing.”

“ Here ? In the middle of the Christ Church burial grounds?”

“Don’t look so aghast.” Opening the leather satchel, she removed the netbook. “Just think of this as an open-air office. Makes me wonder how folks managed before the information age. A laptop computer with 3G wireless service sure beats a quill pen and messenger pigeon, huh?”

Curiosity trumping decorum, he sat down on the weathered stone. Like Edie, he very much wanted to cobble together the disparate pieces of the puzzle. “I suggest that we begin with the deciphered anagram ‘biblicil aten stone to gods eye do not err.’ ”

Although she raised a dubious brow, Edie obliged the request. “Aha! Just as I thought,” she exclaimed a split second later. “Not a single result.”

“An inauspicious start.”

“Okay, we know that the motto ‘Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God’ was significant to Benjamin Franklin, but what about the other two members of the Triad?” As she spoke, Edie typed out the phrase plus the name Thomas Jefferson .

“The first entry, I think.” Caedmon quickly scanned the selected page. “Fascinating . . . Not only did Thomas Jefferson adopt the phrase as his personal motto, but he had it cast onto a signet to seal his correspondence.”

“Let’s see if we get any hits with John Adams. . . . Hmm, looks like Adams mentioned the phrase in passing to his wife, Abigail, but that’s about the extent of it.”

“Fuel for an historian perhaps, but unless I’m greatly mistaken, we’ve just run out of petrol.”

“You are such a naysayer. New search.” Undaunted, Edie flexed her fingers above the keyboard. “Earlier today you hypothesized that the All-Seeing Eye is a red herring. With that in mind, let’s key in ‘All-Seeing Eye’ plus the names of the three Triad members.” An instant later, she shielded her face with her arm. As though protecting herself from flying debris. “Whoa! Talk about a conspiracy theory bomb blast. I think I just got nicked by a hurtling wingnut. Or was that a flying whack-a-doo?”

Caedmon scanned the list of results. “Good God! Given the surfeit of entries that contain the word satanic , it may take hours to find an intelligible kernel in all that dross.”

“Online hysteria over secret cabals has become all the rage. Evidently, we wandered into the eye of the storm.”

He smiled, amused by the pun. “We need to refine our search.”

Edie tapped a finger against her chin. “When we were in London, Rubin spoke at length about the Eye of Thoth, the Radiant Light of Aten, and the All-Seeing Eye. As I recall, he was convinced that they were variant expressions derived from the same stream of hidden knowledge.”

“That’s because Thoth, the author of the Emerald Tablet, was at the root of each of those symbols. Ergo, those three iconic images each conveyed the essence of creation made manifest in the material world.”

“Yada, yada, yada. Let’s see if we can find a connection between Thoth and any of our Triad members.” Edie Googled “Benjamin Franklin + Thoth.” “Nada on the yada,” she muttered when “No results found” popped up on the computer. “Ditto for Jefferson. Who, by the way, happens to be my second favorite redhead.” She punctuated the playful addendum with a wink. “And lastly, the portly man from Quincy.” A moment later, slack-jawed, brown eyes opened wide, she turned to him. “Ohmygod . . . we got a hit.”

Squinting, he leaned closer to the computer. “Are you certain?”

“Oh, yeah. Look, it’s a bronze bas-relief sculpture of Thoth on an exterior door. The door in question is hinged onto the John Adams Building in Washington, D.C. Which, in case you don’t know, is an annex building for the Library of Congress.”

He stared, dumbfounded. Thoth, the ibis-headed Egyptian god, depicted not in a temple on the Nile but in the American capital on the Potomac.

Washington, the city of secrets. Past and present.