Shadow Ritual by Eric Giacometti, Jacques Ravenne
Authors: Eric Giacometti, Jacques Ravenne
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media. Your bosses at the foreign office will love it. It’s not every day that a French national gets bumped off at the Farnese Palace.”
“You won’t have time to do that.”
“You forget my boyfriends . Some of them are reporters and editors,” he said, taking out his cell phone. “Would you like me to make a call? I’m all for transparency.”
Jade balled her hands into fists. “That’s blackmail. Transparency my ass. How ironic from a Mason. You and your buddies love conspiring in the lodge.”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“You’ve got to understand how we outsiders—the common mortals—see it. Meetings that ordinary people can’t attend, aprons, hand tools that never get dirty, and all that playacting. And oh, if you need a job, just call your Mason buddy. He’ll take care of everything. But silly me, I’m just making all of that up, aren’t I.”
“I won’t do you the honor of making a response.”
“A thousand apologies. After all, I’m just a layperson—what do you call us? Profanes?—deprived of the light of the Great Architect of the Universe?”
“We have nothing to hide.”
“You could have fooled me. But then, everyone has secrets.”
Marcas narrowed his eyes. “So what are yours?” he asked.
“My secrets? Let’s just say I’m an exception. I don’t have secrets. I don’t lead a double life as a cop and a hoodwinked brother. But I do have to admit that it would have given me a leg up in my career.”
“And just maybe it would have knocked that chip off your shoulder. In the meantime, though, you’ll just be pulling off some secret agent body-vanishing cover-up of your friend’s murder.”
Marcas and Jade stared at each other a good ten seconds, and then the cop turned on his heels and walked away.
12
“So what is this stone?” Bashir said to himself when he got to his hideout, a small apartment not far from the archeology institute. Unwrapping the item, he wondered if it was worth more than what he was charging his client. The frenzy for artifacts from Palestine hadn’t slackened since the 1946 find in Qumran—the Dead Sea Scrolls, an ideological bombshell. For conservative Jews the scrolls proved that Christians were nothing more than the descendants of a very minor Jewish sect, the Essenes, who predicted the Apocalypse and ran off to the desert. Jesus was just a bottom-tier prophet. Later, of course, other studies brought into question the Essenien origin of the scrolls, and the famous purification pools that attracted tourists were now thought to be ordinary sedimentation pits.
In any case, ideology didn’t interest Bashir. Money did. Some decadent Westerners were willing to pay a small fortune to get this find to Paris. He pulled out the documents he’d retrieved along with the stone and looked them over. Then he opened a map on his laptop and studied the coastal road that ran along the Sinai Desert from Eilat—a real furnace this time of year. And he’d encounter a number of Egyptian Army roadblocks. Too risky. Egypt was a bad idea.
He clicked again and tried flights from Jordan. He could cross the border when it opened in the morning, although it would be no picnic. Searches were systematic. But he had an idea. He could get to Amman by midmorning.
He reserved the flight from Amman to Paris, via Amsterdam.
13
Marcas rolled the toothpick from the salmon hors d’oeuvre between his fingers. What a ridiculous confrontation he’d just had with the head of security. He was annoyed with himself for backing off, but what good would it have done to argue? She had attacked him for being a Freemason, and nothing would have changed her mind. She would never understand his real commitment and the beauty of the rituals. She saw only the dark side.
He looked around, searching for the movie producer, but she was nowhere to be seen. Half the guests had left, and Jaigu had also disappeared. He was probably writing his report for the ambassador and busy
“You won’t have time to do that.”
“You forget my boyfriends . Some of them are reporters and editors,” he said, taking out his cell phone. “Would you like me to make a call? I’m all for transparency.”
Jade balled her hands into fists. “That’s blackmail. Transparency my ass. How ironic from a Mason. You and your buddies love conspiring in the lodge.”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“You’ve got to understand how we outsiders—the common mortals—see it. Meetings that ordinary people can’t attend, aprons, hand tools that never get dirty, and all that playacting. And oh, if you need a job, just call your Mason buddy. He’ll take care of everything. But silly me, I’m just making all of that up, aren’t I.”
“I won’t do you the honor of making a response.”
“A thousand apologies. After all, I’m just a layperson—what do you call us? Profanes?—deprived of the light of the Great Architect of the Universe?”
“We have nothing to hide.”
“You could have fooled me. But then, everyone has secrets.”
Marcas narrowed his eyes. “So what are yours?” he asked.
“My secrets? Let’s just say I’m an exception. I don’t have secrets. I don’t lead a double life as a cop and a hoodwinked brother. But I do have to admit that it would have given me a leg up in my career.”
“And just maybe it would have knocked that chip off your shoulder. In the meantime, though, you’ll just be pulling off some secret agent body-vanishing cover-up of your friend’s murder.”
Marcas and Jade stared at each other a good ten seconds, and then the cop turned on his heels and walked away.
12
“So what is this stone?” Bashir said to himself when he got to his hideout, a small apartment not far from the archeology institute. Unwrapping the item, he wondered if it was worth more than what he was charging his client. The frenzy for artifacts from Palestine hadn’t slackened since the 1946 find in Qumran—the Dead Sea Scrolls, an ideological bombshell. For conservative Jews the scrolls proved that Christians were nothing more than the descendants of a very minor Jewish sect, the Essenes, who predicted the Apocalypse and ran off to the desert. Jesus was just a bottom-tier prophet. Later, of course, other studies brought into question the Essenien origin of the scrolls, and the famous purification pools that attracted tourists were now thought to be ordinary sedimentation pits.
In any case, ideology didn’t interest Bashir. Money did. Some decadent Westerners were willing to pay a small fortune to get this find to Paris. He pulled out the documents he’d retrieved along with the stone and looked them over. Then he opened a map on his laptop and studied the coastal road that ran along the Sinai Desert from Eilat—a real furnace this time of year. And he’d encounter a number of Egyptian Army roadblocks. Too risky. Egypt was a bad idea.
He clicked again and tried flights from Jordan. He could cross the border when it opened in the morning, although it would be no picnic. Searches were systematic. But he had an idea. He could get to Amman by midmorning.
He reserved the flight from Amman to Paris, via Amsterdam.
13
Marcas rolled the toothpick from the salmon hors d’oeuvre between his fingers. What a ridiculous confrontation he’d just had with the head of security. He was annoyed with himself for backing off, but what good would it have done to argue? She had attacked him for being a Freemason, and nothing would have changed her mind. She would never understand his real commitment and the beauty of the rituals. She saw only the dark side.
He looked around, searching for the movie producer, but she was nowhere to be seen. Half the guests had left, and Jaigu had also disappeared. He was probably writing his report for the ambassador and busy
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