The Eye of Moses - Vatican Knights Series 22 (2020), Rick Jones [learn to read books txt] 📗

sat in the middle due to his ranking as staff commander. Misters Archimedes, Donatello and Michelangelo sat to his left, and Misters Galileo, Shakespeare and Plato were to his right. Each man was dressed similarly wearing a gray suit, a red tie, and a pristine-white shirt. Each had a conservative haircut with a laser-sharp part, strong and angular features, and the well-defined contours of their suits suggested gym bodies.

While sitting and waiting with disciplined silence, the white-finished door with wood-trim piping that had been painted gold, opened. Mr. da Vinci walked into the High Chamber with the heels of his shoes clicking against the floor until he sat in the Grand Master’s chair, where he could face everyone sitting around him along the half-circle.

“I apologize for calling you in from your field duties,” he told him. “But we have a situation regarding the theft of a treasured item from the Vault of Croatia. Not to mention the item that had been appropriated from the tomb of Nostradamus at the Collégiale Saint-Laurent.”

“Are you saying that the treasure of the Knights Templar had been located and looted?” asked Mr. Spartan. He sounded incredulous because the location of the Templar treasure had been a well-hidden secret since the fourteenth century. Even scholars and seekers had proffered many theories as to its many possible locations, only for their conjectures to fall well short of the true site.

“Yes and no,” Mr. da Vinci told him. “There was a breach. Six dead. But the only item taken was Aaron’s rod, a relic belonging to the Vatican. Nothing else. Not even a single gold coin was taken.”

“This was a professional hit,” said Mr. Donatello, stating the obvious. “Do we know who?”

Nodding, Mr. da Vinci reached forward with a hand and typed a command into a keyboard that had been implanted on the table in front of him. Once done and easing back into his seat, the dome of a glass lens in the middle of the table projected a holographic image that hovered in mid-air and rotated. It was a 3-D image that was purely state-of-the-art with its imaging ratio clean, clear and precise. It was the tattoo of a grinning skull whose eyes were covered by patches, the symbol of blindness to anything the world needed outside of the Rule under One. “This image was enhanced from one of the attackers on the bunker,” he told them.

Then from Mr. Galileo, who stated softly, “The Shadow Klan.”

“That’s right. But they weren’t after the rod itself, but after the stone embedded within the head of its staff. What they came for was the Eye of Moses. If they wanted treasures, they had an entire roomful to fill their coffers. So, we know it wasn’t about money. And we all know what the primary agenda of the Shadow Klan is. And that’s weapons development.”

“How was it even possible for them to locate the facility in Croatia?” asked Archimedes.

“From the crucible that once belonged to Nostradamus,” Mr. Spartan answered for Mr. da Vinci.

“That’s what we believe, yes,” Mr. da Vinci added. “Nearly three weeks ago, as you all know, we lost Mr. Copernicus who was murdered alongside his family. We now believe that his position had been compromised and that he was forced to relay certain information about the crucible, which he was the keeper of.”

“Why go after the bowl? Why not ask him where the Templar treasure was?” asked Plato.

“Mr. Copernicus, like some members who do not have the ranking privilege to sit at this table as we do, did not know the location of the Templar’s treasure. And the unit guarding the trove didn't realize what they were protecting. But to get back to your question about the bowl, Mr. Plato, it’s a key for unlocking the many riddles written into the quatrains of Nostradamus’ writings. If the Shadow Klan continues to unlock these riddles that have been held secret since the time of Moses, then they arm themselves with a great deal of knowledge that was not meant to be seen outside of this order. And should the Shadow Klan decipher the quatrains and learn their secrets, they will use them against the world to achieve their goals with great suffering, the cost of their ambitions. After Mr. Copernicus was coerced to compromise the whereabouts of the crucible and clarified its approximate location, there was a break-in at the Collégiale Saint-Laurent on the following evening. The tomb was raided and vandalized, with the floor of the vault having been smashed away to reveal the crucible. Whoever killed Mr. Copernicus knew exactly where to look. And in the process of retrieving the bowl, two police officers were killed. Now the crucible, as we all know, carries the symbols along the bowl’s inner wall that are the keys to unraveling the truth behind the quatrains that were handed down to us by Nostradamus. Obviously, the Shadow Klan was able to learn of the treasure’s location after they used the symbols as the key to open quatrain Two Twenty-Four, regarding Hister.”

Common understandings of this quatrain became one of the many entanglements of interpretation from scholars who believed that Nostradamus was talking about Hitler and his military takeover of Europe, which it wasn’t. Hister was the name of the region, which is now northwest Croatia, and the site of the bunker. The army mentioned was not the league of Nazis but the Knights Templar. The rest of the quatrain was nothing more than masking wordplay to throw those off who might have been on the proper track of interpretation.

“Obviously, the Shadow Klan had made the connection and confirmed the site through geospatial satellite imagery,” Mr. da Vinci continued. “And then they converged on the site with an assault team. As members of the Consortium, it is our promised duty to maintain a global balance between the superpowers, or destruction will eventually reign. We need to retrieve those items. The crucible of Nostradamus and Aaron’s rod.”

“The Klan is a shadow organization,” said