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  “I'll be right down.”

  Reddic grabbed his rope, untied the clove hitch knot from his waist and began descending the face of the cathedral. With each passing meter he tried to convince himself that the hard part was over with.

  Somehow, he couldn't quite believe his own optimism.

  32

  Consciousness slowly returned to Madison Jenkins. She rolled onto her side and opened her eyes with caution, unsure of what or who she would find. It was soon apparent that she was all alone inside of a dark room. Only a sliver of light from under the door invaded the darkness.

  Jenkins sat up on the floor and rested her back against the wall. Out of habit she brought her arm up to check her watch, wanting to know how long she had been unconscious. Not surprisingly, it was gone, along with everything else she had in her pockets. Her next priority was to assess her own physical condition. She had been struck hard in the head, a fact a constant throbbing reminded her of.

  There was no blood or an open wound, at least not that she could tell, just a nasty knot that would be tender to the touch for a couple of days. Just feeling the sensitive area made her angry. She had been taken completely off guard. In hindsight she knew she should have just pulled the trigger and dealt with the consequences later. As it were, she was alone and was being held captive in who knew where. She tentatively stood on her feet and rested her arm on the wall to keep her balanced. Feeling steady, she bent at the waist and began performing static stretches to revitalize her body.

  At that moment the door flew open and Brooke stumbled in, falling to the floor at Jenkin's feet. The door quickly closed behind her and locked. Jenkins caught sight of the man who threw Brooke in, but only his body stood out, as he was wearing a mask to disguise his face. Before the door closed them into darkness again, she spotted a light switch next to the door.

  Ignoring Brooke, she hurriedly shuffled over to the door and ran her hand up the wall until she felt the switch. To her astonishment, a small fluorescent light flickered on above her. The entire room now came into view. Brooke was still on the floor, a blindfold covering her eyes. Jenkins squatted next to her and removed the strip of black cloth. She couldn't tell if Brooke looked relieved or shocked to see her.

  “Are you okay?” Jenkins asked.

  “Yes. I'm not hurt, if that's what you're asking,” Brooke responded. “I was more worried about you.”

  Involuntarily, Jenkins reached for her head, but stopped short of touching her wound. “Don't worry about me,” she said with as much courage as she could muster. It was important for her to remain calm and composed for Brooke's sake.

  Looking up, she began scrutinizing every detail in the room. At first glance the room was empty. There was not a single piece of furniture. She couldn't make out any cameras or overt pieces of surveillance equipment, but she was certain that there were listening devices all around her. She needed to talk to Brooke but couldn't risk disclosing anything sensitive.

  Jenkins closed her eyes and concentrated for a moment. She knew there had to be some way to communicate covertly. Suddenly, an idea came to mind. She remembered a detail in Brooke's file noting that she had worked as an American Sign Language interpreter to make money during her undergraduate days. Jenkins knew ASL herself. She turned to Brooke, got her attention, and began signing.

  “Do you still remember how to sign?” Jenkins asked.

  “Of course,” Brooke signed back.

  “Perfect,” Jenkins responded. “Follow my lead.”

  Brooke got on her feet, obviously feeling energized that she was no longer alone.

  “Did you tell them anything?” Jenkins asked aloud. She nodded for Brooke to respond in kind.

  “No. I was too scared,” she said.

  “Don't be scared. Whoever they are they want us for a reason. We just have to cooperate. Let's get some rest.”

  With that, Jenkins broke out into sign language. She told Brooke that under no circumstances was she to cooperate fully. She explained that the only leverage they had was what she knew. If Brooke were to give it up, they would no longer be needed. She also instructed her not to speak audibly concerning anything sensitive. Brooke nodded soberly.

  “Do you know who is holding us?” Brooked signed.

  “I have a good idea. The question is who is calling the shots. I need to figure out a way to get a message to Reddic. I might have an idea, but I'll need your help.”

  “Anything, just name it.”

  “You must follow my instructions to the tee. Any deviation will result in serious consequences for the both of us. Do you understand?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Jenkins sighed as she contemplated what she was about to propose. As much as she wanted to keep Brooke out of danger, she knew there was no other way. Reddic was their only hope at getting out alive. She looked into Brooke's eyes and saw a look of determination that she had not seen before. It was now or never.

  “Good,” she signed. “Let's get started.”

  33

  The descent from the balustrade on the Notre Dame Cathedral was much quicker and far easier. When Reddic's feet touched the ground he quickly gathered the rope and hurried over to where Jaxon had moved in the courtyard. As he arrived his brother was squatted down and running his finger along some sort of brass plate in between the step stones.

  “Do you know what this is?” Jaxon asked without looking up.

  Reddic moved to the other side and turned on his flashlight. A smirk formed on his face as he shook his head in disbelief.

  “You've got to be kidding me,” he said.

  “I wish I was. This is precisely where the laser landed.”

  At their feet was a brass compass star surrounded by four trapezoidal-cut stones. There was an inscription in the stone that read: Point Zero des Routes des France.

  “You know what's funny?” Reddic asked as he quietly laughed to himself. “The last time I was here a girl told me that there was a local legend that if you step on the Point Zero plaque than you were destined to return. Who would've known it would be true?”

  “Cute story,” Jaxon deadpanned. “I know this is a very popular tourist attraction, but it actually makes some sense. Point Zero is the literal center of the city of Paris, as well as the place from which all direction and distances in France originate. This spot has been in place for over twenty-three hundred years, but not this plaque. It is much newer, probably no more than a century old.”

  “So, Point Zero was known during the 14th century?” Reddic asked.

  “Sure, it was, but it wasn't a tourist attraction. There wasn't really any tourism in those days unless you were part of the bourgeois. People worked to live and lived to work. Today millions of people visit Paris to see quirky things like this. In Jacque de Molay's day it was just a point of measurement. There wasn't a plaque or anything like that. If Molay really hid something of importance in this courtyard, he would certainly have used the Gallery of Kings as his clue. That,” he said, waving his arm at the cathedral, “was not going anywhere. This courtyard, on the other hand? There were no guarantees.”

  “I'm sure there are several layers of rock, and stone, and dirt piled up here over centuries,” Reddic added. “And the French Revolution probably wasn't too kind either.”

  “No, it wasn't. In fact, most of this brick and cobblestone probably dates 19th century or newer.”

  “The real question is how deep do we have to dig to find something?” Reddic stole a peek at his cell phone. He had started the stopwatch application when they arrived. They were nearing twenty minutes already. Their window of opportunity was closing quickly.

  “We have about ten minutes to find out.” Reddic put his phone away and dropped to his knees. He pulled his backpack around and placed it to the side. With his flashlight he examined the stone surrounding the brass plaque. He pulled out his knife and picked at the mortar that molded the stone together. A few small chunks were easily shipped away, but the majority held firm.r />
  Reddic sat the knife down and reached for Jaxon’s bag. He extracted a plastic bottle of hydrochloric acid and poured the pungent compound on a section of mortar. To his delight it began to corrode almost immediately. He handed the bottle to Jaxon as he began picking away with his knife.

  “You don't want any of that in your eyes,” he said. “Put your gloves on and pour it all the way around the plaque. We'll look what's underneath.” Jaxon nodded and did as he was instructed.

  “How did you know to bring this?” Jaxon asked.

  “I’ve been on enough treasure hunts with you to know better than to not come prepared.”

  “It’s exciting, isn’t it? Come on, admit that we have fun together.”

  “It’s interesting, I’ll give you that.”

  Within a minute the famed Point Zero plaque was prying loose. Reddic wedged the blade of the knife under one side and leveraged it against the edge of the stone, raising that side of the tablet a couple inches. As he did, Jaxon reached down and caught hold of both sides, pulling it from its resting place. The centerpiece was approximately six inches in depth, weighing almost forty pounds. Jaxon carefully laid it on the ground as Reddic shined the flashlight into the hole.

  To his dismay there was more brick and stone. He grabbed the bottle of acid and repeated the process, pulling out another layer. Underneath there was more of the same. Reddic grimaced as he looked at his brother.

  “I don’t know how much deeper we can go,” Jaxon said. “It's almost sunrise.”

  Reddic pried out one more stone and tossed it at the ground in frustration. He pulled out his phone again and looked at the timer. They were closing in on thirty minutes.

  “Pack up,” he said. “We're out of time.” He reached for the stone he just uncovered to replace it.

  “Wait!” Jaxon exclaimed. “Put your light on that stone again.”

  Balancing the stone in the palm of his hand, Reddic covered its face with light.

  “Do you see that?” Jaxon asked. He reached over and pulled the stone from Reddic's hand, placing it at his knees. He dusted off the face to get a better look. When he looked back up his eyes were wide with excitement.

  “It's the Templar symbol,” he said, tracing it with his finger.

  Reddic pulled the stone to his side to get a better look. Sure enough, embedded in the stone was the Templar cross. An idea suddenly struck him. He searched for a stone of similar size and held it in his right hand while holding the other in his left. Both stones were about ten inches long and eight inches wide, but their weights were different.

  “I think we found what we are looking for,” Reddic said, handing the stone with the embedded symbol back to Jaxon. “This one is less dense than the other and quite a bit lighter.”

  “The Templars were not only incredibly industrious, but innovative,” Jaxon replied. “I'm willing to bet that this is a lockbox that Jacques de Molay had forged to look like a step stone.” He expressed amusement at his own assertion. “It's rather ingenious.”

  “That's great and all, but we need to get out of here,” Reddic stated ominously. “Can you open it?”

  “I don't know. Give me a second.”

  “You have about sixty seconds and then we have to go.”

  Jaxon examined the stone by slowly rubbing his fingers across the face. The changes in texture passed over his fingertips as he covered every square inch. He pressed down on the uppermost point of the cross and felt a slight movement. Ah ha, he thought. He placed his fingers on the four points of the cross and pressed simultaneously. All four points moved inward.

  Unsure of what to do next, Jaxon turned his hand clockwise. To his astonishment, the entire emblem rotated ninety degrees to a stop. Keeping his fingers on the four points, he pulled upward, removing a circular section of the stone's face that surrounded the cross. With his heart nearly pounding out of his chest, Jaxon shined his light inside the stone. It was hollowed-out to about two inches in depth and approximately eight in length and six in width.

  Inside, resting undisturbed, was a scroll parchment resting on top of a rough-looking booklet. Jaxon reached for his backpack and removed a pair of latex gloves and a large Ziploc bag. He carefully removed the documents from the stone's belly and gently inserted it into the bag. He sat back and examined it through the transparent plastic.

  “This is incredible,” he said.

  Reddic did not reply. He was focused on replacing the removed section of the stone lockbox. Next, he began inserting the bricks back into the hole, stacking them just as they were before. Once he had the Point Zero plaque back in its proper resting place, he removed the tube from Jaxon’s backpack and began filling in the space around the plaque with a charcoal-colored coagulant. Within seconds the sealant was solid, and the famous tablet looked undisturbed.

  “We’ll have to look at that later,” Reddic said, jumping to his feet. “Put it in your backpack. Our time here is up.”

  With a new level of excitement over the discovery, Reddic led them along the same route they took previously. But in his haste to leave the Ile de la Cite he failed to notice the man dressed in black watching them from the shadows of the cathedral.

  34

  Arriving back at the flat just off RUE DE LA PAIX, Reddic closed the door and bolted it up. Jaxon was already seated on the couch with his bag open. He put on a pair of thin, white document gloves and carefully removed the parchment and booklet. Placing it on the coffee table, he turned on the lamp and began smoothing out the edges of the scroll on the glass surface.

  As Jaxon examined the document, he instinctively became more and more cautious. The parchment was old; older than any Templar document he had ever accessed. There was another detail that caught his attention. If it were a Templar piece the script would almost certainly be French, Latin, or another romantic tongue. Yet this document was written in old Hebrew.

  Reddic pulled a chair up to the table and sat silently. He watched his brother scrutinize every word and phrase on the page. In a near telepathic way, Reddic placed a notebook and pen next to the document. His concentration momentarily broken, Jaxon looked up and offered his thanks. He scribbled a few words on the notebook page, circling some and underlining others.

  Suddenly, Jaxon stopped writing and peered at Reddic with an astonished look on his face.

  “This is extraordinary,” he said. “I never imagined discovering anything like this.”

  “Who wrote it?” Reddic asked.

  “That's the thing. I just presumed it would be from the fourteenth century. But what I’m looking at here was, I believe, written much, much earlier.”

  “How much earlier? Are you talking a couple hundred years?”

  “Try a couple thousand. I think this was written during the time of Moses.”

  “That's a long time ago, man. Wasn’t that around fifteen-hundred BC?”

  “Fourteen hundred, actually, but close enough.”

  “So again, who wrote it?” Reddic pressed.

  “I’m not sure I can say with any certainty. The syntax, the verbiage, it is identical to the oldest known accounts of the Torah. Of course, we will never know for sure until we authenticate the script and date the document.”

  “That's not going to happen,” Reddic said. “At least not right now. Don't forget, we're up against the clock here, Jax. We need to know what is written and why Molay hid it. This is our best hope. You can worry about authentication and credit and all that other stuff down the road. The biggest question is, can you translate this?”

  “Well, Hebrew is one of my strongest languages. If I were to translate this for a publication, I would need a lot more time than what you're giving me. But, I can at the very least provide an indication of what we're dealing with from a substantive standpoint.”

  “I'll go get us some water while you get started. More than likely we will need to skip over anything that is not pertinent to this secret brotherhood.”

  Reddic left for the kitchen as Ja
xon began the laborious task of speed translating. Analyzing any Hebrew document in the most ideal of circumstances would be a challenge in and of itself based on the complexity of the language, especially to native English speakers. Apart from the language being written from right to left, the sentence structure was unorthodox. There was no set form of a word order, neither were there rules regarding articles or pronouns. The most perplexing, however, was the omission of definitive verbs, such as “To Be” and others denoting possession. The syntax challenges were certainly enough to cause frustration in even the most seasoned academic, but the added pressure of lives being on the line make the task that much more maddening.

  Jaxon took a deep breath and regained his focus. He began in the top right-hand corner and worked his way to the left. On the notebook he wrote as fast as he could, with many words written in abbreviated script. Soon Reddic returned to the room and placed an unopened bottle of water on the table next to the notebook. Jaxon did not acknowledge the drink. He was completely immersed into the translation.

  Not wanting to disturb his brother's concentration, Reddic walked toward the living room window and leaned against the wall. His thoughts drifted to Brooke. He considered calling Madison to check in, but ultimately thought better of it. His boss was, after all, as professional as they came. She would have everything under control.

  Yet Reddic couldn't get the thought of Brooke out of his head. It wasn't a romantic thought, as much as an introspective analysis. He knew he wasn't getting any younger. With each passing year he wondered how long he could keep up this pace. Being a professional athlete was not only difficult, but an extremely unsecure industry. Every year there were hundreds of younger players desperate to make the league and take a roster spot from anybody that was perceived weak. Add to that the reality that team ownership had no loyalty to their players or coaches. All they cared about was revenue, and the superstars that drove it. It really was a cutthroat business.