The Cult of Venus, page 1
part #7 of Templars in America Series
The Cult of Venus
Templars and the Ancient Goddess
Copyright © 2017 by David S. Brody
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning or by any other information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author: dsbrody@comcast.net
Eyes That See Publishing
Westford, Massachusetts
ISBN 978-0-9907413-3-6
1st edition
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Except as otherwise noted in the Author’s Note, any resemblance to actual events or people, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover by Kimberly Scott
Printed in USA
Praise for Books in this Series
“Brody does a terrific job of wrapping his research in a fast-paced thrill ride.”
—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
“Rich and scope and vividly engrossing.”
—MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW
“A comparison to The Da Vinci Code and National Treasure is inevitable….The story rips the reader into a fast-paced adventure.”
—FRESH FICTION
“A treat to read….If you are a fan of Templar history you will find this book very pleasing.”
—KNIGHT TEMPLAR MAGAZINE
“An excellent historical conspiracy thriller. It builds on its most famous predecessor, The Da Vinci Code, and takes it one step farther—and across the Atlantic.”
—MYSTERY BOOK NEWS
“A rousing adventure. Highly recommended to all Dan Brown and Michael Crichton fans.”
—READERS’ FAVORITE BOOK REVIEW
“The year is early, but this book will be hard to beat; it’s already on my ‘Best of’ list.”
—BARYON REVIEW
To the Strong Women in My Life
Renee
Allie
Kimberly
Irene
Jeanne
One cannot be surrounded by strong, independent and powerful women without beginning to question the whole idea of male primacy. The next question then becomes inevitable: How is it that we in Western society ended up worshipping a God who is 100% male?
About the Author
David S. Brody is a Boston Globe bestselling fiction writer named Boston’s “Best Local Author” by the Boston Phoenix newspaper. A graduate of Tufts University and Georgetown Law School, he is a former Director of the New England Antiquities Research Association (NEARA) and is a dedicated researcher in the field of pre-Columbian exploration of America. He has appeared as a guest expert on documentaries airing on History Channel, Travel Channel, PBS and Discovery Channel, as well as the Coast to Coast AM radio show.
All six prior books in his Templars in America Series have been Amazon Kindle Top 10 Bestsellers in their category, with three titles reaching #1.
The Cult of Venus is his tenth novel.
For more information, please visit
DavidBrodyBooks.com
Also by the Author
Unlawful Deeds
Blood of the Tribe
The Wrong Abraham
The “Templars in America” Series
Cabal of the Westford Knight: Templars at the Newport Tower (Book 1)
Thief on the Cross: Templar Secrets in America (Book 2)
Powdered Gold: Templars and the American Ark of the Covenant (Book 3)
The Oath of Nimrod: Giants, MK-Ultra and the Smithsonian Coverup (Book 4)
The Isaac Question: Templars and the Secret of the Old Testament (Book 5)
Echoes of Atlantis: Crones, Templars and the Lost Continent (Book 6)
Note to Readers
The artifacts and sites pictured in this novel are real. While the story is fiction, the sites and artifacts used to tell it are authentic. See Author’s Note at end of book for detailed information regarding sites and artifacts.
Though this is the seventh book in the series, it is a stand-alone story. Readers who have not read the first six should feel free to jump right in. The summary below provides some basic background for new readers:
Cameron Thorne, age 42, is an attorney/historian whose passion is researching sites and artifacts that indicate the presence in America of European explorers prior to Columbus. His wife, Amanda Spencer-Gunn, is a former British museum curator who moved to the U.S. from England while in her mid-twenties and shares his research passion; she has a particular expertise in the history of the medieval Knights Templar. They reside in Westford, Massachusetts, a suburb northwest of Boston. Newly married, they have recently adopted a twelve-year-old girl named Astarte. Cam and Amanda are part of a growing community of researchers investigating early exploration of North America.
Prologue
Westford, Massachusetts
February, Present Day
Astarte took a deep breath and focused on the face, her face, staring back at her from the screen of her smart phone. The same chestnut skin, the same cobalt eyes, the same high cheekbones and pointed chin that looked back at her every day in the mirror. But today the face looked so serious.
Not that it really mattered what she looked like. It mattered what she said. Mrs. Witaski promised that nobody would ever see these videos, that she would save them and return them to the class in five years, right before graduation. The assignment was for the students to describe the biggest challenges in their lives. Later they could look back and see how they had faced them. Astarte doubted other kids would be talking about the kinds of things she would be.
She pushed her hair back, sighed again, and, glancing down at the script she had prepared, pressed record:
My name is Astarte, and I just turned 12 years old.
Fact: My parents are trailblazing historians, working to uncover the true history of North America.
Fact: My parents are fools, taking rumor and legend and believing it to be true history.
I do not know which statement is correct, although I understand both cannot be. And therefore I do not know how my story will end. But I do know that they love me. Even if that may not be enough.
The problem is that I have a destiny. My people, the Mandan Native Americans, know me as the Fortieth Princess. They have been waiting 40 generations for my arrival, for me to come of age, for me to (and I have heard these words so many times that they ring in my head like an alarm clock that won’t turn off) “reunite the people of the world in a religion worshiping the Mother Goddess.” I descend from almost all the Western world’s great religious leaders—King David, Jesus, Mohammed—and also from Cleopatra and Joseph Smith and a long line of Native American chieftesses. My uncle said I have more royal blood in my veins than anyone who has ever lived. But perhaps he is just as much a fool as some say my parents are.
My uncle is dead now. So is my real mother, and also my father. Cameron and Amanda are my adopted parents. Like I said, they love me. But I’m not sure they understand that my destiny makes me unlike other kids. I can’t just go to school and get good grades and play sports. And they need to be more careful with their research. If important people in this country think their ideas are crazy, what are they going to think about me, their daughter? “Oh, she’s loony just like her parents.”
But I’m not. I know what the prophecy says. I know what my destiny is. I know what I have to do. What I don’t know is, can I do it?
Chapter 1
Westford, Massachusetts
March, Present Day
Katherine Morville skidded her older model Corolla around the tight turn of the highway exit ramp, the chassis shaking and moaning from the torque. She glanced up quickly at the rearview mirror. Two headlights, like the eyes of some relentless Jurassic predator, bore down on her. As they had for the past hour. That they had followed her off the exit confirmed this was not merely her imagination.
What did they want with her? She gripped the steering wheel, blinking away the tears, her eyes throbbing from the exertion of the ordeal. She had been so close, driving over a thousand miles, her old car bravely surviving what was supposed to be a leisurely road trip. Maybe they had been following her from the beginning.
“Shit,” she said, as the cultured British voice of her GPS calmly instructed her to take a left off the exit ramp. Too late. She’d flip the car if she tried to make that turn. An all-night Mobil station loomed fifty yards up the road. Maybe the wrong turn could be put to good use.
She glanced back again. The top-heavy SUV in pursuit had slowed, taking the exit ramp at a safer speed. Rational, calculating, confident in knowing its prey could not escape. But it might give her the few seconds she needed.
Screeching into the empty gas station lot, she slammed the car to a halt next to the station entryway. She was out the door, a leather rucksack in one arm, even before the Corolla stopped bouncing from its violent stop. With only seconds before the SUV closed on her, she dropped the pack into a garbage can next to the entrance and covered it with a newspaper. Back in the car, as fast as her stiff, sixty-year-old legs could carry her, she accelerated out of the gas station lot and reversed course, toward the exit ramp. As she sped away, the SUV spotted her, executed a neat U-turn, and resumed its unrelenting pursuit.
She exhaled. They might get her, but they would not get the rucksack. She floored the gas pedal, racing through the sleepy streets of suburban Boston, wondering how a divor
Cameron Thorne awoke with a start, the buzzing from his cell phone cutting through a dream. The same dream, in fact, that he often had: Standing in some heaven-like cloud, he had been given the opportunity to question any historical figure in world history. All he had to do was ring a bell—an antique brass call bell, like the ones used to summon a hotel clerk—and announce their name. But his hands would not move, and his voice would not speak. As his frustration, and then his anger, grew, the cloud washed over him, the bell disappeared, and the opportunity vanished. At least the dream confirmed he had chosen wisely in paring back his law practice and focusing more of his time on historical research and teaching. He never once dreamt about the law.
He fumbled for the phone as Amanda stirred next to him. His clock radio, a vestige from his college days in the nineties, read 2:15 AM. Adrenaline surged through his body, the dream forgotten. A cold fear gripped him. Phone calls in the middle of the night were never good news.
The display on the phone read “Iowa,” with a number Cam did not recognize. He stabbed at the answer button. “This is Cam.”
“Thank God you picked up.” The words came fast and breathless, the voice that of a woman, echoing as if on a speaker phone. “I have something I have to give you. But they’re chasing me! Oh, God, they’re trying to kill me—”
“Wait, who?”
“Please, just listen.” A screech of tires interrupted the rush of words. “I’m here in Westford. I have journals. Prince Henry’s journals. They’ve been in my family for generations. I was told you’d know what to do with them. I drove all day.” Amanda sat up; Cam motioned her to stay quiet as the woman spoke even faster. “I dumped them in a garbage can at the Mobil station off the highway. I didn’t know what else to do. Oh God!”
The line went dead. Cam stared at it for a second, as if it might have answers. Was the woman really in danger? He dialed 911 and explained the strange call, without mentioning the journals. “Can you find her location based on her cell number?” He read it off. “I think she’s in trouble.”
“What in bloody hell is going on?” Amanda asked.
He slapped his cheeks to push the last vestiges of slumber away. “This woman claims to have Prince Henry’s journals. And she hid them in a garbage can.” It sounded silly, he knew. But she sounded sincere. Or at least sincerely frightened.
“What are you going to do?”
He swung his legs out of bed and grabbed a pair of jeans. “Drive down to that gas station.”
“Do you think she really has 600-year-old journals?”
He bit his lip. “Who knows? But I can’t let them go out with the trash.”
Cam’s mind raced even faster than he drove. He and Amanda had spent the past six years researching—and largely validating—the legend of Scottish explorer Prince Henry Sinclair crossing the Atlantic to explore New England a century before Columbus. Sinclair, so the legend went, ended up on a high hill in Westford, Massachusetts, 25 miles inland, where one of his knights, Sir James Gunn, died. Cam ascended that hill now, pushing the speed limit in the dark, still night. He whipped past a monument marking the spot where Sinclair’s men had carved an effigy into the rock ledge as a grave marker for their comrade. The carving, known as the Westford Knight, had faded over the centuries, but a rubbing of the rock face from decades ago clearly showed the knight’s head, shoulders, shield and sword. And the pommel, cross guard and blade of the sword remained readily visible:
Amanda was a direct descendent of Gunn, the carving in fact the reason she had first visited Westford. As he always did, Cam gave a quick salute, thanking the medieval knight for bringing Amanda to him. And now a woman claimed to have journals which might prove the expedition conclusively.
Police lights flashed ahead, not far from the Town Common. Cam slowed. A white sedan rested on its roof in the opposite lane near a fork in the road, tottering as first responders worked to free the driver. Cam’s chest tightened. Even upside down, the black letters of the license plate jumped out at him: “IOWA.” Matching the caller ID.
He opened his window to the cold March air as he cruised past the scene, his eyes searching the driver’s seat area. He made out a middle-aged woman, crumpled, upside-down, her face bloodied but her visage surprisingly calm. She managed a slight nod. Or perhaps it was his imagination. He looked away. He could do nothing for her. Not here, at least.
Going as fast as he dared around the Common, Cam raced toward the commercial strip along the highway. He pictured the Iowa woman traveling the other direction, only minutes earlier, frightened and desperate, pouring her story out to Cam as some unknown adversary pursued her. She must have raced off the highway exit and ditched the journals in the first place she could find. But not long after, apparently with Cam on the line, they had caught her again. He shook his head in an effort to clear away the memory of the sedan on its roof.
The neon Mobil sign loomed in the distance, the red “o” like the eye of some feral scavenger. He was going to be the scavenger tonight, digging through the trash.
After killing the engine, he jumped from the car and raised the hood in such a way as to shield his activities from anyone watching from inside the convenience store. Moving furtively, he slid the top off the trash receptacle wedged between the gas pumps. A motor oil bottle and a Milky Way wrapper rested on top. He nudged them aside and dug his hand in, probing for a solid mass of paper. Nothing.
Did he have the wrong spot? Or could the pursuers have circled back and retrieved the documents? Cursing, he looked around. There. Another garbage can, by the front door. He ambled over, ignoring a candy wrapper blowing in the wind at his feet. Nestled on top of the trash, partially covered by a copy of the local newspaper, sat a brown leather satchel bag, the type of thing he used to use in his lawyer days to carry thick client files. He hesitated before grabbing it—a voice in his head told him this could be important, that secrecy was paramount. Fighting the temptation just to snatch the bag, he went into the all-night station, walked to the back of the store and grabbed a Diet Coke from the fridge. “Hey,” he said to the clerk, “that fridge is making a funny buzzing noise.” The clerk waited for Cam to exit, then shuffled back to check out the buzz. The station lot was empty.
Cam reached in and grabbed the satchel. As he did so, an ambulance, sirens blaring, raced by, toward the Town Common.
He exhaled, his eyes following the lights until they disappeared around a bend. He held the bag against his chest with two hands. “I hope it was worth it, whoever you are.”
Katherine Morville felt nothing as the dark-eyed fireman with the nice smile worked to pull her from her car. No pain, no anxiety. And best of all, no fear. Nothing. Even as the blood gushed down the side of her face and her arm hung bent at an unnatural angle—just nothing.
It was the best she had felt in almost a year.
Which said a lot about her life. Broke. Divorced. Estranged from her daughter. Obsessed with the legends of her ancestors. The highlight of her year was a feeling of numbness after flipping her car.
But at least the journals were safe. She had seen Cameron Thorne drive past, locked her eyes on his. He would retrieve the journals. He would know what to do with them. He would validate them and tell the world of her selfless act, of her small but crucial role in preserving the Sinclair legacy. Then, finally, her daughter might find something to admire in her, something to esteem in what had otherwise been the utterly meritless existence of Katherine Prudence Morville.
She exhaled and allowed the handsome firefighter to lift her, to carry her—finally—from the wreckage that had become her life.
Jamila Bashear sat in the rotunda on the top floor of the main branch of the New York Public Library, her bony, liver-spotted hands clenched in the lap of her long amber dress. She stared at the four massive murals which dominated the space. “What an absolute load of camel dung,” she hissed, in a voice louder than she would have used in her younger days. A couple of overnight janitors spun and stared—even in New York, people, especially old women, rarely cursed in a loud voice in a library. But she had paid a queen’s ransom to have the library opened for her in the middle of the night. And at 86 years of age, she didn’t care who heard her. Especially because she was correct in her assessment.
