Shadow Ritual by Eric Giacometti, Jacques Ravenne Page B

It had long, narrow streets that cars avoided, sidewalks lined with lemon trees, and vast villas built during the fascist era.
    Once in his room, he pulled out a leather-bound notebook and leafed through it to an empty page. He carefully opened the red-lacquer pen his son had given him for Father’s Day and set to work.
    He jotted down the ritual used by the killer and reviewed his recollections of similar slayings he had heard about in his research of Freemason history. The scholar who had related these stories—the worshipful master at the Trois Lumières Lodge and a specialist in Spanish history—had died ten years earlier. He had recounted two series of attacks against Freemasons one hundred years apart. Marcas had no idea how much truth there was to the stories or if they were just amplifications of the various persecutions brothers had been subjected to over the centuries.
    The first had occurred right after Napoleon’s troops had left Spain. A hundred Spanish brothers were decapitated for their support of the Frenchman’s ideas and their hostility to the monarchy. The second was during the Spanish Civil War, which pitted supporters of the republic against rebels led by General Francisco Franco, a sworn enemy of freemasonry.
    Marcas would have to find his notes. He remembered something about executions in Seville, a pillaged lodge, and Freemasons discovered with their skulls cracked open. “Hiram” was written in blood on their foreheads.

JAKIN
    The other pillar guarding the temple entrance,
    a symbol of righteousness

14
    Marcas awoke with a start, the image of Sophie Dawes’s body sprawled on the embassy floor in his mind. He got up and stretched, trying to shake the sadness he felt for his sister Freemason. The chain that united them had lost a link.
    Marcas skipped breakfast and headed straight to the temple on the Via Condotti. A white-haired man who had to be at least ninety held the job of overseeing the archives at the Alessendro di Cagliostro Lodge. When Marcas asked for the records of violence against Roman Freemasons, the man brought out a faded green box filled with papers that had seen better days.
    Marcas sat down in a deep leather chair and delved into the contents. The three blows to the body were too close to the legend of Hiram’s death to be a coincidence. He made his way through open-meeting reports and press clippings about fascist groups ransacking lodges during Mussolini’s reign. Then nothing at all until the Allies liberated Italy.
    Frustrated, Marcas asked the old librarian about unexplained Freemason murders.
    “My memory is not so good anymore,” the librarian said, scratching his head. He shuffled over to a chair and settled in. “I do recall that right before the Allies arrived, three lodge officers from Rome and Milan were found murdered in a mansion not far from the Coliseum. Their faces were smashed in.”
    “Do you think it might have been the Blackshirts or the SS?” Marcas asked.
    “A brother who was in the police told me he didn’t think either of them was responsible. The Blackshirts used other methods, and Hitler’s strongmen tortured their victims before executing them or just shot them and threw them in common graves.”
    The old man was choosing his words carefully. He seemed to recover some deeply held energy as he talked about that dark time in history. No doubt it was a remnant of the courage and daring he had needed to survive.
    The librarian handed Marcas another file that was even dustier. It was filled with press clippings from the nineteen thirties. One of the articles gave an account of the 1934 murder of a researcher, a Freemason who had been beaten to death. His skull was crushed. Next to the story, someone had written “Hiram?” in purple ink. Marcas made photocopies and opened his red notebook to jot down a list of similar murders.
    1934. Florence, a brother.
    1944. Rome, three brothers.
    2005. Rome, a sister.
    He thanked the old man and left the