The Expected One Read online

  “Anytime he was forced to paint a woman, like Mona Lisa, he turned it into some kind of a joke, mostly to amuse himself. That’s how he dealt with being forced to paint subjects that didn’t appeal to him.”

  Derek turned back to the Madonna of the Rocks. “The only female we know he respected was Elisabeth, the perfect woman and mother. The real madonna. See, here she is with her arm around this child — her child. It’s clearly John.”

  Tammy nodded. The infant sheltered in the woman’s arms was undoubtedly John the Baptist.

  “Now look at Elisabeth’s left hand. She is pushing the Christ child away, showing that he is lower than her child. Leonardo has even placed Jesus physically below John to show you his inferiority. And finally, look at the angel Uriel’s eyes. Who is he looking at with adoration? See in the first painting? He is pointing at John, but he is also making our ‘Remember John’ symbol.

  “The Immaculate Conception crowd were unhappy with the original painting and its obvious Johannite message. They made Leo do a second one, insisting that this time Mary and Jesus have haloes and that the angel not point at John. So look over here and you will see that they got what they asked for, sort of. Mary and Jesus have a halo, but so does John. He also gave John a baptismal staff, to make it even more clear just who he is and to give him more authority. In both paintings, Jesus is bestowing his blessing on John. So, looking at these now, who do you think Leonardo revered as the true messiah and prophet?”

  Tammy answered honestly. “John the Baptist. Clearly.”

  “Of course. The archangel Uriel is affirming the Baptist’s superiority, and so is John’s mother. In our tradition, we worship Elisabeth in the same way that deluded Christians worship the mother of Jesus. Our girls are raised in Elisabeth’s image, to be Daughters of Righteousness.”

  Tammy raised an eyebrow. “What exactly does that mean?”

  Derek smiled slyly at her and moved closer. “That women should know their place, and their place is to be obedient and subservient to the men in their lives. But you know, it’s not as bad as it sounds. Once they become the mother of a son, they earn the title of ‘An Elisabeth’ and are treated like queens. You should see the diamonds my mother was given for each one of us. Believe me, if you saw what her overprivileged life was like you would not feel any sympathy for her.”

  “And you support this idea of women as subservient?” Tammy held her ground, not showing her increasing nervousness.

  “As I said, I was raised with it. Works for me.” He shrugged.

  Tammy shook her head, then started to laugh, half with irony and half with increasing nerves.

  “What?” Derek asked.

  “I was just thinking about this room, with all of the da Vinci heresy, as opposed to Sinclair’s room, with all of the Botticelli heresy. It’s like ‘Renaissance Death Match. Leonardo versus Sandro.’ ”

  Derek didn’t laugh. “It would be funny if it wasn’t so damn serious. The rivalry between John’s descendants and Jesus’ descendants has caused a lot of bloodshed. It’s still causing a lot of trouble now, more than you’d ever believe.”

  Tammy looked at Derek with feigned confusion. She knew exactly what he was getting at but couldn’t allow him to know that. She asked innocently, “John’s descendants?”

  Derek looked taken aback. “Of course. Don’t tell me you didn’t know that?”

  Tammy kept up the front, shaking her head. “No, I didn’t.” Her expression implored him to continue.

  “Come on, you didn’t know that John had a son? That’s how the Guild was founded, by the descendants of John. Well, it’s a long story because half of them eventually sold out to the papists and the Christ followers, like the Medicis.” He made a distasteful face at the mention of Italy’s historic first family.

  “Even Leonardo ended up in the service of the enemy at the end of his life, although we think he was held captive in France against his will. But the others, the hard core, formed our Guild. In fact, you’re looking at a great-grandson, about two thousand years removed, of John the Baptist.”

  Tammy dreaded the inevitable — that she would end up in Derek’s hotel room, and worse. But there was no getting around it. She had to get her hands on this so-called True Book of the Holy Grail and find out just what these John boys were all about. She had the opportunity to be the first person outside the Guild to obtain this rare information, and she wasn’t going to blow it. This went so much deeper than any of them had imagined, and there was no way she was leaving without that book. She would do it for her future film, she would do it for her friends in Blue Apples, and most of all she would do it for Roland. Of course, Roland could never know to what lengths Tammy went to obtain the documents. She would have to devise a credible version of events for his ears. She was thankful that the chauffeur from the Château des Pommes Bleues was picking her up later in the afternoon, so she would have time on the drive back to Arques to consider her story.

  Tammy insisted on lunch before they returned to Derek’s hotel, and proceeded to order copious amounts of ruby-colored Pays d’Oc wine. She had watched him throw back a handful of prescription drugs in deference to his hangover, and she had the smallest glimmer of hope that the mixture of the pills and the wine might buy her a more docile Derek, if not an unconscious one.

  Derek confessed over the meal that he was telling Tammy secrets of the Guild because he wanted her to expose them in print and on film. While he could never go on record — he had an agenda, but he wasn’t crazy — he wanted someone to reveal the truth about the Guild.

  “But why?” Tammy had asked. It didn’t make sense to her. Derek was immersed in the Guild and obviously deeply influenced by its teachings. The Guild was partially responsible for the wealth his family had accumulated. Why would Derek turn on them?

  “Listen, Tammy,” he leaned across the table and whispered to her, “I’m willing to tell you a lot of stuff — things that deal with serious crimes. Even murder. But you can’t ever let anyone know that it was me or I’m dead.”

  “I still don’t understand,” Tammy replied. “Why are you turning your coat here on an organization that is so important to you and your family?”

  “The new Teacher of Righteousness,” Derek spat. “Cromwell. He’s a crazy bastard and he will take us all down with him. I’m actually being loyal, not disloyal. The only hope we have to save the Guild is to see him taken out before he does permanent damage. I want you to expose him, not the Guild. Make him look like a loose cannon, a crazy fanatic.”

  “Why are you trusting me with this?” Tammy was becoming increasingly uncomfortable. This was far bigger than she had anticipated, and far murkier than she desired.

  Derek looked smug as he ran his fingers up one of her arms. “Because you’re ambitious and you’ll love having the exclusive on this information for a book and a film. And because my trust fund is equal to the gross national product of several independent nations and you know I’ll write you whatever checks you need for funding. Am I right?”

  Tammy smiled at him sweetly and placed her hand over his, trying not to be sick. She had to play this out, she simply had to. “But of course.”

  What Derek hadn’t revealed in this conversation was that the American delegation was planning a coup within the Guild. First, they needed to tidy up some loose ends in Europe by eliminating the power players there. His father, Eli Wainwright, was poised to become the next Teacher of Righteousness — with Derek as his eventual successor — if they could neutralize the European power structure.

  Derek Wainwright smiled then, the cunning expression of a predator. He had been using Tammy for this purpose all along. If she thought she had duped him into spilling Guild secrets by using her feminine wiles, then she was just a stupid tramp who deserved to be used in exactly the way he intended. Still, it would be a pleasant enough way to end the afternoon. And hadn’t the little slut teased him quite long enough?

  Tammy tried not to wake Derek as she gathered her b
elongings. She needed to get the hell out of there, couldn’t wait to get back to the safety of the château to take a very long shower. Tammy wondered briefly how long it would take to scrub the stench of these Guild fanatics from her skin.

  She was grateful that the worst possible outcome had been avoided. She had calculated accurately — Derek’s consumption of prescription drugs, combined with the wine and his exhaustion, had caused him to pass out when they got back to the hotel room.

  It had been dodgy at first. Derek was all hands when they got to his room, but Tammy rerouted him skillfully toward his obvious obsession: bringing down his rival, John Simon Cromwell. She emphasized that she needed as much information as possible if she was going to be his partner in such a dangerous game. Derek delivered on what he promised and more — documents, secrets, and the shockingly graphic description of a particularly brutal murder in Marseille a few years earlier.

  It had taken every ounce of control that Tammy possessed not to be sick at Derek’s account of the execution of the Languedoc man. He had been decapitated and mutilated, his right index finger severed as a symbol of the Guild’s revenge. The knowledge of such an act would have been abhorrent to Tammy under any circumstances. But the dead man was known to her; he was the former Grand Master of the Society of Blue Apples. She could not allow Derek to see that she recognized the crime as he described it. She had been very careful to keep her face as expressionless as possible.

  Tammy was scrambling to find everything and make her way out of Derek’s room when she knocked over a table lamp with a loud thud. She heard Derek stir at this and cursed to herself.

  “Hey,” he grumbled, groggy, “where ya goin’?”

  “Sinclair’s car is here to take me back to Arques. I have to get back for a dinner there tonight with Maureen.”

  He tried to sit up, grabbed his head, and groaned. He collapsed on his back again but said as he did, “Oh, Maureen. Damn, I almost forgot to tell you.”

  Tammy froze. “What?”

  “She may be in trouble today.”

  “How?”

  “She’s out with Jean-Claude de la Motte today, right?”

  Tammy nodded, thinking as fast as she could, trying to figure it out. Derek rolled over and stretched languidly.

  “Wake up, girl. Jean-Claude is one of us. Or maybe I should say one of them. He’s the right arm of that nutcase Teacher of Righteousness and the head of our French chapter. Has been since he was a kid. His real name isn’t even Jean-Claude, it’s Jean-Baptiste.” He paused to laugh at this little joke before continuing. “But he probably won’t hurt her. Yet. They have too much interest in whether or not she can find the so-called treasure while she’s here. And we both know there’s a time limit on that possibility.”

  Tammy’s head was spinning. She couldn’t process Jean-Claude’s treachery, not this quickly. He had been a friend of Sinclair and Roland’s for years and they trusted him implicitly. How long had this infiltration been going on? But something else was bothering her, and she had to know. She prayed she didn’t look as shaken as she was, and asked her question with a calm she didn’t feel.

  “Historically, The Expected One was eliminated before the treasure could be uncovered. Why would this be any different? If Jean…Baptiste and your leader believe Maureen is the prophesied one, why wouldn’t they just get rid of her before she can fulfill that role? Like they did with Joan and Germaine?”

  Derek yawned. “Because they want her to lead them to the Magdalene book once and for all so they can destroy it. After that, your friend will be history, too — before she has the chance to write about it.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” Tammy asked carefully.

  “Because I want Jean-Baptiste to go down with his leader. And I figure that once your Grand Master Sinclair knows he’s been duped, he’ll eliminate that problematic frog for me.”

  Tammy wanted to scream at him then, wanted to tell him that Sinclair and the others in their organization weren’t like Derek and the hate-mongers in his Guild. But she didn’t dare say a word to tip her hand before she was safely out the door.

  Derek wasn’t finished. “Meanwhile, let’s just say that if I were you I’d get that redhead the hell out of the Languedoc as soon as possible.”

  Tammy turned toward the door and then stopped. She had to ask one final question, had to know just how badly she had been duped by Derek all these years.

  “How do you feel about all this?” she asked quietly.

  “Don’t care one way or the other, really,” Derek replied, sounding supremely bored and more than ready to return to his wine-induced slumber. “Although your friend seems nice enough, she’s still a Jesus spawn and that makes her my natural enemy. And that’s just the way it is. Maybe you can’t understand it, but our beliefs go back a long way. As for the actual discovery of the whore’s scrolls, everyone seems certain that it will happen this time because your girl fits all the points of the prophecy, and not just some of them. But I’m not worried about it. What’s the big deal, anyway?”

  He laughed for a second and rolled onto his side, raising himself up on one elbow to look at her. “See, here’s the funny thing. Nobody wants what’s in those scrolls. The Vatican won’t want to recognize them because of the content, nor will any of the other mainstream Christians. Historians don’t want them because it will make all the academics and Bible scholars look like idiots. So chances are that our own enemies will bury them before the public ever knows what’s in there. Saves us the trouble of having to deal with it — that’s how I look at it.”

  He yawned again as if the whole topic was too mundane to be dealt with further and rolled onto his back again as he added, “Of course, we despise it because we know it will contain lies about John the Baptist. And because it was written by a whore.”

  Tammy wanted to run from the hotel, get away from Derek and his hateful Guild philosophy as quickly as possible. She had a death grip on her cell phone and whipped it out of her pocket as soon as she was outside. There was no time to think, no time to do anything but find out where Maureen was now.

  She hit the speed dial for Roland and wanted to cry when she heard his comforting Occitan accent. The connection was terrible, and she had to yell several times to be heard. “Maureen! Where is Maureen now, do you know?”

  Damn it! She couldn’t hear his reply. She yelled again. “What? I can’t hear you. Yell, Roland. Yell so I can hear you.”

  Roland yelled. “Maureen. Is. Here.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes. She was looking for you, she…”

  And they were cut off. That’s just as well, thought Tammy. I don’t want to explain anything to Roland until I’ve had time to think about it all. As long as Maureen was safely in the Château des Pommes Bleues, there was time to regroup. She would meet with Sinclair before dinner to strategize.

  Tammy checked the time on her cell phone. She was scheduled to meet the chauffeur in less than half an hour near the gates of the city. It wasn’t a long walk from where she was, but she felt weak and wasn’t sure she could trust her wobbly legs to get her there quickly. She began to walk, trying to breathe while considering all of the shocking things she had learned from and about Derek. As it all came back to her in vivid color, she felt her stomach turn. Noticing the garden of a small hotel just ahead, Tammy ran and reached the bushes just in time to vomit violently.

  Château des Pommes Bleues

  June 25, 2005

  MAUREEN WAS FEELING WILDLY GUILTY about neglecting Peter. But when she returned from her outing with Jean-Claude, he was nowhere to be found.

  “I have not seen the Abbé since this morning,” Roland informed her. “He had a late breakfast, then I saw him leave shortly after in your hired car. But it is Sunday. Perhaps he went to church? We have many in the area.”

  Maureen nodded, not giving it too much more thought. Peter was wordly and spoke fluent French, so it was logical that he may have planned to go in search of
a mass and then to take in more of the sights in this extraordinary region.

  She was scheduled to have dinner in the château later with Tammy — something she was anxious to do, but not at the expense of hurting Peter’s feelings. She asked Roland, “Do you have any way of contacting Tamara Wisdom? I forgot to ask if she has a cell phone with her.”

  “Oui, she does. And I can do that for you as I need to ask her something for Lord Bérenger. Is something wrong?”

  “No, I was just wondering if she would mind if Peter joined us for dinner.”

  “I am sure it will not be a problem, Mademoiselle Paschal. In fact, I believe she is expecting the Abbé to attend. She requested that I set dinner for the four of you at eight o’clock.”

  Maureen thanked Roland and retreated to her room. She stopped first at Peter’s door and knocked — no reply. She jiggled the gilded knob and pushed the door gently open, peeking her head in. Peter’s things were laid out neatly by the side of the bed — his leather-bound Bible and his crystal rosary beads. But he was nowhere to be seen.

  Maureen returned to her palatial suite and removed the larger of her Moleskine notebooks. She wanted to write about Montsegur while it was fresh in her mind. But as she slid the elastic strap off the notebook and opened the pages, she was surprised when another story of martyrdom came to her mind.

  Maureen had climbed the rugged mountains of the Dead Sea region at sunrise on her visit to the Holy Land, hiking the rocky, serpentine trail alongside a handful of seekers. She was unsure just what drove her to undertake the arduous climb. Even so early, the heat was powerful. The others on the path that morning were all Jewish, and for them this was an obvious and emotional pilgrimage. Maureen could make no such claim of heritage or religion.

  She paused many times on the way up to admire the almost painfully beautiful vistas of light and color as they played over the strange, lunar landscape and glittered off the salt crystals of the dormant water. The view inspired her, giving her the strength to push her screaming muscles farther up the mountain.