The Eight Page 14

  “Why do you tell me these things?” I asked Dr. Euler. “Even if I understood the ends these men held dear, what would it have to do with me? And what could I do about it? Though I aspire to great things, I am still a child.”

  “From my knowledge of their goals,” said Euler softly, “if these men are not defeated, they may defeat the world. You may be a child today, but soon you will be the wife of the next czar of Russia, the first male ruler of that empire in two decades. You must listen to what I have to say, etch it upon your mind.” He took me by the arm.

  “Sometimes these men call themselves the Brotherhood of Freemasons, sometimes Rosicrucians. Whatever the name they choose, they have one thing in common. Their origins are in North Africa. When Prince Edward established this society upon Western soil, they called themselves the Order of the Architects of Africa. They consider that their predecessors were the architects of ancient civilization, that they cut and laid the stones of the pyramids of Egypt, they built the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Tower and Gates of Babel. They knew the mysteries of the ancients. But I believe they were the architects of something else, something more recent and perhaps more powerful than any …”

  Euler paused and regarded me with a look I shall never forget. It haunts me today, nearly fifty years later, as if it had happened a moment ago. I see him with terrifying vividness even in my dreams, and can feel his breath upon my neck as he leaned forward to whisper to me:

  “I believe that they were also the architects of the Montglane Service. And consider themselves to be its rightful heirs.”

  When Catherine finished her tale, she and the abbess sat without speaking in the large library at the Hermitage, where they had brought the manuscript of Voltaire’s journals. There at the vast table with thirty-foot walls of books rising around them, Catherine watched the abbess as a cat watches a mouse. The abbess was gazing out of the broad windows overlooking the lawn, where the cadre of Imperial Guard stamped and blew upon their fingers in the cold morning air.

  “My late husband,” Catherine added softly, “was a devotee of Frederick the Great of Prussia. Peter used to wear a Prussian uniform at court in Petersburg. On our wedding night, he spread toy Prussian soldiers across our bed and made me drill the troops. When Frederick brought the Order of Freemasons into Prussia in force, Peter joined their group and pledged his life to supporting them.”

  “And so,” commented the abbess, “you overthrew your husband, imprisoned him, and arranged his assassination.”

  “He was a dangerous maniac,” Catherine said. “But I was not implicated in his death. Six years later, in 1768, Frederick built the Grand Lodge of African Architects at Silesia. King Gustavus of Sweden joined the order, and despite Maria Theresa’s attempts to drive these vermin from Austria, her son Joseph the Second joined as well. I brought my friend Dr. Euler back to Russia as quickly as possible when I learned of these events.

  “The old mathematician was, by now, completely blind. But he had not lost his inner vision. When Voltaire died, Euler pressed me to acquire his library. It contained important documents that Frederick the Great badly wanted. When I succeeded in bringing the library to Petersburg, here is what I found. I have saved it to show you.”

  The empress extracted from Voltaire’s manuscript a parchment document, handing it to the abbess, who unfolded it carefully. It was addressed from Frederick, Prince Regent of Prussia, to Voltaire, dated in the same year Frederick had entered the Order of Freemasons:

  Monsieur, there is nothing I wish so much as to possess all your writings.… If there be among your manuscripts any that you wish to conceal from the eyes of the public, I engage to keep them in the profoundest secrecy.…

  The abbess looked up from the paper. Her eyes had a faraway look. Slowly she folded the letter and handed it back to Catherine, who returned it to its hiding place.

  “Is it not clear he refers to Voltaire’s decryption of Cardinal Richelieu’s diary?” asked the empress. “He sought to acquire this information from the moment he joined the secret order. Now perhaps you will believe me.…”

  Catherine picked up the last of the leather-bound volumes and fanned through the pages until she reached a place near the end, reading aloud those words the abbess had already etched upon her mind, the words the long-dead Cardinal Richelieu had taken such care to inscribe in a code known only to himself:

  For I found at last, that the secret discovered in Ancient Babylonia, the secret transmitted into the Persian and Indian Empires and known only by the elect and chosen few, was in fact the secret of the Montglane Service.

  This secret, like the sacred name of God, was never to be inscribed in any writing. A secret so powerful that it caused the fall of civilizations and the death of kings, it could never be communicated to any except the initiated among the sacred orders, to men who had passed the tests and taken the oaths. So terrible was this knowledge that it could only be entrusted to the highest echelons of the Elite.

  It is my belief that this secret took the shape of a formula, and that this formula was the cause of the downfall of the Kingdoms of all time, Kingdoms that stand only as legends in our history today. And the Moors, despite their initiation into the secret knowledge, and despite their fear of it, did transcribe this formula into the Montglane Service. They built the sacred symbols into the squares of the board itself and into the pieces, retaining the key that only true Masters of the Game could use to unlock it.

  This I have gleaned from my reading of the Ancient Manuscripts collected from Chalons, Soissons, and Tours and translated by myself.

  May God have mercy upon our souls.

  Ecce Signum,

  Armand Jean du Plessis,

  Duc de Richelieu & Vicar of

  Lucon, Poitou & Paris,

  Cardinal of Rome

  Prime Minister of France

  Anno Domini 1642

  “From his memoirs,” Catherine said to the silent abbess when she’d finished reading, “we learn that ‘the Iron Cardinal’ had planned to journey soon to the See of Montglane. But he died, as you know, in December of the same year, after putting down the insurrection at Roussillon. Can we doubt for an instant that he knew these secret societies existed, or that he planned to lay his hands upon the Montglane Service before it could fall into other hands? Everything he did was aimed at power. Why should he change at so ripe an age?”

  “My dear Figchen,” said the abbess with a faint smile that did not reflect the inner turmoil she felt at hearing these words, “your point is well taken. But all these men are dead. During their lifetimes, they may have sought. But they did not find. Surely you cannot say you fear the ghosts of dead men?”

  “Ghosts can rise again!” Catherine said forcefully. “Fifteen years ago, the British colonies in America overthrew the yoke of empire. Who were the men involved? Men named Washington, Jefferson, Franklin—Freemasons all! Today, the King of France is in prison, his crown about to roll along with his head. Who are the men behind it? Lafayette, Condorcet, Danton, Desmoulins, Brissot, Sieyès, and the king’s own brothers, including the Due d’Orleans—Freemasons all.”

  “A coincidence—” the abbess began, but Catherine cut her off.

  “Was it coincidence that, of the men I tried to employ to pass the Bill of Seizure in France, the one who accepted my terms was none other than Mirabeau—a member of the Freemasons? Of course, he could not know I planned to relieve him of the treasure when he took the bribe.”

  “The Bishop of Autun declined?” said the abbess with a smile, looking at her friend across the thick portfolios of journals. “And what reason did he give?”

  “The amount he asked to cooperate with me was outrageous,” the czarina fumed, rising to her feet. “That man knew more than he was willing to reveal to me. You know that in the assembly they call this Talleyrand ‘the Angora Cat’? He purrs, but he has claws. I do not trust him.”

  “You trust a man whom you are able to bribe, but mistrust one whom you are not?�
�� said the abbess. With a slow, sad look, she drew her robes around her and stood up to face her friend across the table. Then she turned as if to depart.

  “Where are you going?” cried the czarina in alarm. “Do you not see why I have taken these actions? I am offering you my protection. I am sole ruler of the largest country on earth. I place my power in your hands.…”

  “Sophia,” the abbess said calmly, “I thank you for your offer, but I do not fear these men as you do. I am willing to believe, as you claim, that they are mystics, perhaps even revolutionaries. Has it ever occurred to you that these societies of mystics which you’ve studied so closely may have an end in mind that you’ve not foreseen?”

  “What do you mean?” said the empress. “It’s clear from their actions they want to topple monarchies into the dust. What could their aim be, but to control the world?”

  “Perhaps their aim is to free the world.” The abbess smiled. “At the moment, I do not have enough evidence to say one way or the other, but I do have sufficient facts at hand to say this: I see from your words that you are driven to act out the destiny that was written in your hand from birth—the three crowns in your palm. But I must act out my own.”

  The abbess turned her hand palm upward and held it out to her friend across the table. There, near the wrist, the life line and the line of destiny twisted together to form a figure eight. Catherine looked down at it in icy silence, then slowly traced the figure with her fingertips.

  “You seek to give me your protection,” said the abbess softly. “But I am protected by a greater power than you.”

  “I knew it!” Catherine cried hoarsely, tossing the other’s hand aside. “All this talk of lofty aims and goals means only one thing: You’ve made a pact with another without consulting me! Who is it, in whom you’ve placed your misguided trust? Tell me his name, I demand it!”

  “Gladly.” The abbess smiled. “It is He who placed this sign upon my hand. And in this sign, I reign absolute. You may be the ruler of all the Russias, my dear Figchen. But please do not forget who I really am. And by whom I was chosen. Remember that God is the greatest chess master of all.”

  THE KNIGHT’S WHEEL

  King Arthur dreamed a wonderful dream, and that was this: that him seemed he sat upon a chaflet in a chair, and the chair was fast to a wheel, and thereupon sat King Arthur in the richest cloth of gold … and suddenly the king thought the wheel turned up-so-down, and he fell among the serpents, and every beast took him by a limb; and then the king cried as he lay in his bed and slept, “Help.”

  —Le Morte d’Arthur

  Sir Thomas Malory

  Regnabo, Regno, Regnavi, Sum sine regno.

  (I shall reign, I reign, I have reigned, I am without reign.)

  —Inscription on the Wheel of Fortune

  The Tarot

  The morning after the chess tournament was a Monday. I got up groggily from my lumpy Murphy bed, shoved it back into the wall, and went off to the shower to prepare for another day at Con Edison.

  Rubbing myself with my toweling robe, I padded barefoot back down the hall and searched for the telephone amid my collection of artisana. After my dinner at The Palm with Lily and the strange event that followed it, I’d decided we were indeed a pair of pawns in someone else’s game, and I wanted to bring some heavier pieces out on my side of the board. I knew precisely where to begin.

  Lily and I had agreed over dinner that Solarin’s warning to me had somehow been related to the bizarre happenings of the day, but after that point our opinions had diverged. She was convinced Solarin was behind everything else that had gone on.

  “First, Fiske dies under mysterious circumstances,” she pointed out as we sat amid the palm trees at one of the closely packed wooden tables. “How do we know Solarin didn’t kill him? Then Saul disappears, leaving my car and my dog prey to vandals. Obviously Saul was kidnapped, or he’d never have left his post.”

  “That’s obvious,” I said with a grin as I watched her wolf down a slab of raw beef. I knew Saul wouldn’t have dared to face Lily again unless something dire had happened to him. Lily moved on to demolish a huge salad and three baskets of bread as our conversation continued.

  “Then someone takes a potshot at us,” she said between munches, “and we both agree the bullet came from the open windows of the gaming room.”

  “There were two bullets,” I pointed out. “Maybe someone shot at Saul and scared him away before we got there.”

  “But the pièce de résistance,” said Lily, still munching bread and ignoring me, “is that I have discovered not only method and means, but motive!”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I know why Solarin is doing these nefarious things. I figured it out between the prime rib and the salad.”

  “Do clue me in,” I said. I could hear Carioca clawing at Lily’s belongings within her satchel bag, and I suspected it would only be a matter of time till our fellow diners heard it, too.

  “You know about the scandal in Spain, of course?” she said. I had to rack my brain on that one.

  “You mean Solarin being recalled to Russia a few years back?” She nodded, and I added, “That’s all you told me.”

  “It was over a formula,” said Lily. “You see, Solarin had dropped out of the chess rat race pretty early. He only played at tournaments from time to time. He has grand master ranking, but he actually studied to be a physicist; that’s what he does for a living. During the competition in Spain, Solarin had made a bet with another player, promising him some secret formula if that player beat him in the tournament.”

  “What was the formula?”

  “I don’t know. But when his wager was reported in the press, the Russians panicked. Solarin disappeared overnight and was never heard from again until now.”

  “A physics formula?” I asked.

  “Maybe a recipe for a secret weapon. That would explain everything, wouldn’t it?” I couldn’t see that it would explain any thing, but I let her rattle on.

  “Fearing that Solarin will pull the same trick again at this tournament, the KGB race in and bump Fiske off, then try to scare me away as well. If either of us had won a game off Solarin, he might give us the secret formula!” She was thrilled with how well her explanation fit the circumstances, but I wasn’t buying it.

  “That’s a great theory all right,” I agreed. “There are only a few loose ends to be tied up. For example, what happened to Saul? Why would the Russians have let Solarin out of the country if they suspected he’d try the same trick again—assuming it was a trick? And why on earth would Solarin want to pass a weapons formula either to you or to that doddering old relic Fiske, may his soul rest in peace?”

  “Well, okay, not everything fits perfectly,” she admitted. “But at least it’s a start.”

  “As Sherlock Holmes once said, ‘It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data,’” I told her. “I suggest we both do a little research on Solarin. But I still think we should go to the police. After all, we have two bullet holes to prove our point.”

  “Never,” cried Lily in agitation, “will I admit that I’m not up to solving this mystery on my own. Strategy is my middle name.”

  So we agreed, after many heated words and a shared hot-fudge sundae, that we would part for a few days and do some research into Grand Master Solarin’s background and modus operandi.

  Lily’s chess coach had been a grand master himself. Though she had to practice heavily before her own match on Tuesday, Lily thought he might have some insight into Solarin’s character that she could glean during training. Meanwhile she’d check up on Saul. If he hadn’t been kidnapped (which I think would have disappointed her dramatic flair), she would find out from his own lips why he’d deserted his post.

  I had plans of my own, and I didn’t care to share them with Lily Rad just yet.

  I had a friend in Manhattan who was even more mysterious than the elusive Solarin. A man who was listed in no phone book and
had no mailing address. He was one of the legends of data processing and, though barely thirty years old, had written definitive texts on the subject. He’d been my mentor in the computer business when I’d first arrived in the Big Apple three years earlier, and he’d bailed me out of some sticky situations in the past. His name, when he chose to use it, was Dr. Ladislaus Nim.

  Nim was not only a master of data processing, but an expert in chess. He’d played against Reshevsky and Fischer and had held his own. But his real expertise was in his panoramic knowledge of the game, and that was why I wanted to find him. He had committed to memory all of the world championship games in history. He was a walking biographical encyclopedia of the lives of the grand masters. He could regale you for hours with stories of the history of chess, when he chose to be charming. I knew he would be able to pull together the threads of the bag I seemed to be holding. Once I found him.

  But wanting to find Nim and finding him were two different things. His phone answering service made the KGB and CIA seem like gossipy blabbermouths. They wouldn’t even admit they knew who he was when you called, and I’d been calling for weeks now.

  I’d wanted to reach Nim, simply to say good-bye, when I’d learned I was leaving the country. Now I had to reach him, and not only because of the pact I’d made with Lily Rad. Because now I knew that these seemingly disconnected things—Fiske’s death, Solarin’s warning, Saul’s disappearance—were all in some way connected. They were connected to me.

  I knew it because at midnight when I’d left Lily at The Palm restaurant, I had decided to begin a little research right away. Instead of going directly home, I had taken a cab to the Fifth Avenue Hotel to confront that fortune-teller who’d somehow, three months earlier, given me the same warning that Solarin had given me that very afternoon. Though his warning had been swiftly followed on the heels by firm evidence, I found their closely worded language a bit too coincidental. And I wanted to know why.