C. Palov - Templar's Code

“Listen to you! What are you going to do? Haul it back to Oxford so you can wave it in the face of all those dons at Queen’s College who dissed your dissertation? Because I’m beginning to think that’s what this deadly scavenger hunt was all about, redeeming your academic reputation. You’d love nothing more than to rub the Oxford crowd’s face in it. ‘See, I was right all along!’”

“Nothing so crass, I can assure you. And you know full well why I went to such lengths to find the relic. The horrific fate of Atlantis was never far from my mind.”

“But you do seek vindication,” she pressed.

Long moments passed, the drawn-out silence instilling a weighty sense of consequence to the unanswered accusation.

“For nearly fourteen years I’ve had to live with the disgrace of being shown the door,” he said after a lengthy pause. “Don’t you understand, Edie, the Emerald Tablet is the link between ancient Egypt and the Knights Templar. I’ve waited my entire adult life for such a discovery. So, to answer your question, yes, I seek vindication.”

The admission gave Edie no satisfaction. “How can you put your personal vanity and ambition above the concerns of mankind?”

Caedmon threw his hands up. “Ah! So now I’m Atlas, forced to bear the weight of the world on my shoulders. I’ve put too much blood, sweat, toil, and tears into this venture to back away from it.”

“Don’t go all Winston Churchill on me.”

“I seek only the truth.”

“Oh, yeah, truth . . . the coin of your realm,” she deadpanned. “And, of course, let’s not forget about knowledge. That’s your—what do they call it?—oh, yeah, your Bushidō. The code that you live by.”

“You cannot sway me. My mind is made up.”

“But you haven’t even considered the dire—” Edie stopped in midsentence. Wasted breath . She’d have better luck convincing a stranger to wire her money.

Caedmon reached for the netbook.

A few minutes later, he smiled, his good humor returned. “I’ve already received a reply from Dr. Lyon. How curious. No typed message, but he did send an attachment.”

“Great,” she muttered as he pecked at the keyboard. “Maybe after dinner we can all do a little skinny-dipping in the hidden stream of knowledge.”

His smile instantly vanished, replaced by a thunder-struck expression.

“What’s the matter?” Not giving him a chance to answer, Edie grabbed the netbook and swiveled it in her direction. A half second later, she slapped a hand over her mouth, afraid she was going to upchuck the Kir Royale. “Ohmygod!”

“Trust me, there’s no evidence of God in that .”

That being a photograph of Dr. Lyon, naked, submerged in a tub of pink bath water. Everything else was colored red: hair, cheeks, and shoulders all streaked with crimson blood. Mouth gaping. Eyes bulging . His withered face frozen in a death mask of sheer terror. Above the tub, a bloodred octogram star had been scrawled on the white ceramic tile. A horrific piece of graffiti.

Edie wrapped her arms around her waist and closed her eyes. It did no good . She could still see a frail, white-haired man peering up from his watery grave.

“Such a bloody, pointless murder . . . killing for the sake of killing.” Caedmon reached for his untouched champagne flute and took a long swig. Mauve-colored liquid sloshed in the glass, his hand visibly shaking. “We are dealing with a man without conscience. That rare breed who takes a sadistic delight in the bloodletting.”

“What do we do now?” she asked, barely able to get the words out.

Expression grim, Caedmon said, “We go to ground.”

CHAPTER 84

Dark-eyed night.

And a damned dreary one at that. The clear skies that prevailed earlier had given way to a pluvial close of day.

Removing his hand from the steering wheel, Caedmon flipped on the Mini’s windshield wipers, the rain coming down in blinding sheets. He cast his driving companion a sideways glance. “Since you’re treating me like a leper, I presume you’re still peeved.”

“Try outraged.” Edie shot him a mutinous glare. “How in God’s name did Rico Suave find Dr. Lyon?”

Having braved Edie’s ire more than a few times, Caedmon was determined to remain calm. To be the staid voice of British reason in the eye of an American storm.

“I suspect the bastard used an electronic listening device to eavesdrop on our conversation at Chow Hounds. If so, he would have overheard the discussion regarding Dr. Lyon. Catholic University is only two miles from the eatery. A ten-minute drive at most. No doubt the professor resided in the near vicinity.”

What he didn’t mention— why invite additional scorn? —was his suspicion that no sooner did the beautiful bastard revive from the head bashing than he went on a murderous rampage. A predator, their adversary had a marked predilection for defenseless victims.

Like Edie Miller.

The reason why they were en route to Baltimore-Washington International Airport. According to the concierge at the Willard, there was a flight for London boarding at four o’clock the next morning. Six hours hence. He’d already contacted his old group leader at Five and made arrangements for Edie to be picked up at Gatwick and taken to a safe house. Yet another reason for her ire: She didn’t like being shuttled across the Atlantic and orphaned out to strangers.

Caedmon flipped the turn signal and veered onto the northbound ramp of Rock Creek Parkway. This late at night, there were few motorists on the winding, tree-lined thoroughfare.

“If you were just tilting at windmills, I could accept that,” Edie said out of the proverbial blue. “But you actually found the Emerald Tablet and because you couldn’t keep the discovery to yourself, an innocent old man was murdered. His death is on your hands.”

“Oh, for pity’s sake! That’s total nonsense.”

“From where I’m sitting, the flame is high and your fiddle is seriously out of tune.”

Patience tried, he tightened his grip on the steering wheel. “Rather than trade barbs, we need to take stock.”

“Just listen to you. You’re like a junkie in denial.” Accusation leveled, Edie ponderously sighed. “It’s my own damned fault. I loved the fact that you were a brainiac. An iconoclast. A Renaissance man.”

It didn’t escape his notice that Edie used the past tense for that most cherished of verbs. “And ‘hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.’ ”

“Can the literary quotes.”

“Quotations.”

The instant he said it, he felt like a bastard, the conversation having devolved into a juvenile tit-for-tat. “I know that you’re angry, Edie. However, you will get on that plane tomorrow morning and you will —Christ!” he abruptly hissed, furiously pumping the brake pedal with his right foot. No resistance! None whatsoever.

His spine stiffened, levering away from the car seat. He shot Edie a quick sideways glance. “Are you securely belted into your seat?”

“Why, what’s the matter?”

Still stomping on the malfunctioning pedal, he shifted into a lower gear. “The brakes just went out on the Mini.”

“But we’re going downhill!” There was no mistaking the terror in her voice. “If we crash into a tree, we’ll never survive.”

“As I’m well aware,” he grated through clenched teeth. With the wet road conditions, if he yanked on the emergency brake they’d jackknife for certain. He sucked in a loud, choppy breath.

He glanced at the speedometer. Bugger! Twenty-five hundred pounds of steel picking up speed with each passing second.